


and I'll spin you gold

by RosaLeoa



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Marta Carrera, Black Character(s), Brazilian Folklore, Canon-Typical Violence, Children, Contraceptive Negotiations, Enthusiastic Consent, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Retellings, Genderfluid Character, Happy Ending, Harlan tricked a Fae, HopePunk, Latinx Character(s), Lesbian Character, M/M, Marta and Harlan WEREN'T a couple, Marta and Harlan were best friends, Marta is a Fae, Marta is attacked, Mental Breakdown, Mental Institutions, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Fae Eating Humans, Mentions of homophobia, Myth and Folklore, Native American Character(s), Other, Past Sexual Assault of a Minor Character, Pregnancy, Ransom Drysdale Being an Asshole, Set in Brazil, Soulmates, This is actually a VERY monogamous work, Trans Character, Years Long Separation, bound by magic, latin america, mentions of past relationships - Freeform, mentions of transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 59,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosaLeoa/pseuds/RosaLeoa
Summary: In the heart of the Natural Reserve near a small town in Rio de Janeiro (BR), Marta lives alone in her cottage in the woods. Ransom is a tourist with a family burden to handle.She's bound not to lie, but that doesn't mean that she can't play the humans by her own rules. He had to settle a debt first to access his inheritance, little did he know what would it cost him.Be careful with what you wish for.
Relationships: Benoit Blanc & Marta Cabrera, Benoit Blanc/Lieutenant Elliott (Knives Out), Marta Cabrera & Harlan Thrombey, Marta Cabrera & Lieutenant Elliott, Marta Cabrera & Original Female Character(s), Marta Cabrera/Original Female Character(s), Marta Cabrera/Ransom Drysdale
Comments: 78
Kudos: 65
Collections: Books for me





	1. Se eu morrer não chore não, é só a lua

**Author's Note:**

> We all know that Marta is a trickster, but as I was chatting with a few friends, I realized that she had High-Key Fae Behavior in the movie. This is the result of my own obsession with moodboarding my headcanons. English Is My Second Language and I have to thank Caffeinated Jedi, my dear friend for checking up my grammar and clarity on some of the chapters after I posted them.  
> Here I mixed a lot of Brazilian/Latin American with European folklore. My main inspirations from fairytales for this fic are Rumplestiltskin, Beauty and the Beast/Eros and Psiche, Potira, Caipora, Saci-Pererê, Yara, and Sleeping Beauty. From pop culture, besides, obviously, Knives Out, you will see a lot of "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "Love in the Times of the Cholera", and "House of the Spirits" references alongside with "American Gods" and "Stardust"'s borrowed ideas. (and a brief hommage to Saramago's "Death with Interruptions" in Death's character)  
> This is definitely not what anyone thinks when they hear "Set in Brazil/Rio" and I wanted to play a little with your expectations too, show you a different face of Latin America. It's set in the woods, but it's not the Amazon, sorry guys.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assume that, when Marta is speaking with the locals, they're talking in Portuguese (I added some expressions in Portuguese because I wanted to). I added A LOT of information on this chapter and I'll try to explain everything in the notes (and translate). If I miss something, please point it out to me in the comment session. I hope you like it.
> 
> If anyone here has read my other WIPs, you know that I name chapters after songs/their lyrics. Even though I wrote this listening to "folklore" (yes, I'm a basic Taylor bitch), I'll only name the chapters after Brazilian songs in this fic.  
> This first chapter is named after two lines of Lô Borges' ["Um girassol da cor do seu cabelo"](https://open.spotify.com/track/2eDUcjS6SSDJd6Rcx4TFkd) (A sunflower with the color of your hair), that roughly translates to "If I die, please don't cry, it's just the moon".

There are days in the spring in which the whole world seems to die just a little bit with the occasional and sudden heatwave that ravages the land. Even the birds are too tired to sing. Only the insects keep buzzing in the thick air, heavy with moisture and the promise of rain. She liked to go skinny dipping in the small rivers near her house, with clear waters that sing-songed on the rocks at its bottom. Marta would float belly up, looking at the beautiful blue skies above. In those moments suspended in Time, she liked to travel through the many lives she lived.

When her mother and sister lived with her and she still had people that called her by the name her grandmother whispered in her ear when she was born, Marta and Alice would play together in the trees and waterfalls, accompanied by the tamarins that were their friends and always surrounded by a cloud of yellow butterflies. Their mother would take them on occasion with her to Quilombo da Serra [1], to talk to her favorite pajés and teach them medicines. When Mother was young, there were no stolen people from Africa in their lands, and the Timbiras [2] were the only ones to dance with her when she called. Mother was a healer, just like Marta wanted to become.

Father had arrived with the caraíbas [3] that came looking for the magical place in which everything one planted would grow. He was a traveler, and Mother would say that he was also the weirdest dancer she had ever met. His voice was beautiful. When it was time to put the girls to bed in that weird-shaped, stone cottage that he built for mother, he would lay between them and sing as many songs from his homeland as it took for them to sleep. Marta and Alice liked to sing together "Spinn, spinn meine liebe Tochter" [4] at the beginning of the night, and he would switch to more calm lullabies to make them quiet. It was from him that Marta got the useless -- but very coveted by the humans -- gift to spin gold on the spindle that he left behind when he decided it was time for him to uproot himself again and leave to explore other parts of the continent where there were people with fair skin, eyes of the color of the sky, and hair that looked like corn -- like his kind was.

Mother didn't cry when he left and neither did Alice, who was very crossed by the fact that he wouldn't take her with him, but Marta did. Marta cried so much for so many years missing her father's voice that a fountain grew on the spot behind their house where she would hide to weep. Marta would still cry every time she was left behind by the ones she loved, but not as much as she did for her father.

***

Her small corner in the woods shrunk as the years passed, but there, in the forest that surrounded her cottage, the ipes [5] grew tall and beautiful with their colorful foliage that people often would mistake for flowers. Marta was proud of her strong brazilwood trees [6], planted in immemorial ages by her grandmother, and the contorted and flexible guava trees [7] that gave her the sweetest jam.

That Day of the Dead [8] she woke up knowing it was the time to go to Teresópolis street market with her sweets and herbal medicines. In a different time, the people would keep their distance from her, respectfully worrying about not crossing Marta, but nowadays no one believed in fairytales anymore. Her sister had packed up a while ago - when the evangelical churches began talking about witches - and left to the wild and almost unreachable parts of the Serra do Mar [9]. But Marta was a healer, she always had been, and her intuition would tell her when there were hurt people in need of her. She needed to answer their calls as much as she needed the sun.

Marta braided her long hair with wildflowers in it and dressed in a long white lace dress, gifted to her by one of her favorite locals. Iramaya was a seamstress whose dressmaking ability made her famous all around the world. She wouldn't leave Teresópolis and would always say to anyone who wanted to hear that everything she had she owed to The Cabrera [10]. When Marta was around, she would laugh and sip a little more of Maya's lemonade, reassuring her and her listeners that she gave too much credit to an old fairytale.

Maya stopped on the side of the road when Marta arrived, carrying her things, guarded by her dogs. She waved good morning to her friend and went to the back to put her things in the truck with Maya's deliveries.

"Are you a hitchhiker now?" Asked the woman from behind her shades, with both of her hands loosely holding the pickup wheel. Marta smiled sheepishly, already opening the car door after saying goodbye to Cloak and Dagger.

"You should lock your doors when driving this thing, my friend. We never know who will want to go in."

Maya laughed openly, throwing her head back and making her black and silver curls spread over the car seat. Her skin was the color of the deepest caramel, and her eyes had the same shade of burned mate tea leaves.

"Funny, Martinha, I swear I locked it when I left home because you know that Ruth doesn't let me leave the house without every safety measure taken. Don't forget your seatbelt."

"It wasn't when I got in." She answered, strapping in to please her friend.

"I must be getting senile then."

Marta looked at her very seriously. Maya's aging worried Marta a lot. Time and Death were pretty much the only ones that she couldn't really bend to her will by batting her long and thick eyelashes. So she would brew innumerous potions for every affliction of the body and the soul and send them to Maya and Ruth's house in a vain attempt to delay the inevitable.

"Are you?" She asked, anxious. "I think I have rosemary and pitanga leaves in my boxes. When we arrive in the city, I'll make an infusion blend for you, and I will be in touch with your wife to be sure that you're drinking it."

"Puta merda, Marta, I'm very much _not_ senile. No need to scare Ruthinha with your shared craziness about my age. She's not that younger than me, you know that, right?" Maya was already driving and didn't look at Marta to chastise her. "We both know that even locked doors can't resist your charm, mulher." [11] She added in an almost whisper.

"But, Maya, this tea is actually tasty, I promise."

"You are making puppy eyes right now even though I can't stop looking at the road, aren't you?"

"Maybe..."

"And tell me how exactly are you planning on checking up on me with Ruth if your house has no electricity and no phone service, as far as I know."

"Iramaya, after over 50 years of friendship, I thought you would have learned already that there are some questions you just don't ask a lady."

"É, some lady you are." They were in silence for a while, with just the radio songs and occasional static filling the space between them. An old Beatles song came up, and Marta remembered the man that used to like singing them while playing Go with her. He was once her best friend. He came for summer vacation and stayed for a few years, going back to the US with the gifts that Marta gave him and leaving her with his dogs. Death was strangely fond of Cloak and Dagger for reasons she could never decipher. He was the only one that ever tricked her in her own game. " _Fine_ , make the tea blend, but if it's another horrible medicine of yours, I'll curse you while I drink it."

  
***

The sun was already high in the sky when they arrived, and, even if it wasn't feeling so hot on the skin, Marta knew that it would leave burn marks on the careless. She never burnt. Death could always be crossed with her, but Spring was her friend and the Day of the Dead was one of her favorite holidays of the year. She arranged her many glass jars, boxes, and bundles of leaves on the stand that the cheesemaker would always leave already settled for her, even on the days that she decided not to go.

"Fada Madrinha, Fada Madrinha, mamãe sent us to ask you for that special ointment you make for her knees!"[12] The florist's seven-year-old twins ran to Marta as soon as she finished setting up. They had beautiful mismatched eyes that Marta drew many times on her notebooks while their mother was pregnant. The girl's right eye was green and her left one was blue. Her brother was the opposite. Marta reached for the small vial, that she had already put on top of everything; a feeling made her anticipate that it would be needed.

"Here it is, now where is my payment?" Marta crouched between the children and let them shower her with sweet kisses and give her the beautiful bouquet of roses that their mother had sent for her. Marta's father would say that she was too soft, too gentle with her requests. She disagreed.

When she turned to her stand, the sun played tricks with her. For a moment, she was sixty years in the past. This time, he smelled of expensive perfume, and his clothes, albeit simple, stated his wealth clearly. In his large hands was a beat-up notebook, like the ones he was always scribbling in the margins.

"Hola. ¿Hablas Inglés?" His voice broke the spell. Marta could feel that she was blinking a lot, trying to bury deep the memories of his guitar and melodic voice before she started to cry. It wasn't him. That guy was just a tourist. Time would never go back, she was way too strict to do so; Marta had tried to convince her already.

"Yes, how can I help you? Are you interested in homemade soaps? Maybe exotic jams to bring back home?" Even with his eyes concealed by the sunglasses he was wearing, Marta could see the disgust in his face when he side-eyed her precious products. She had to remind herself that she wasn't like Alice, and she didn't hex people just for crossing her.

"No. I have a very weird request, actually. I'm here to settle a debt." His dark blonde hair shone under the sun, and Marta realized that he was distracting her with this whole doppelganger thing. She broke visual contact and decided that she would concentrate on how she had cataloged her herbs on the stand. Marta had the firm belief that everything could be improved.

"A debt?" She asked, intrigued.

"Yes, my grandfather died a couple months ago, and he said that I could only get his inheritance if I spread his ashes here in this forest in some weird ritual to pay his debt with this Cabrera spirit or something."

Her hands stopped fumbling, and she looked back at the man in front of her. So, not actually a doppelganger. The nose, the jaw, the hair color… He laughed, and the sound was dry, almost without any emotion behind it.

"I know I sound crazy. I think the old man is once again playing games with..."

Marta didn't laugh with him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Oh, sorry. I'm Ransom Drysdale. And yours is…?"

"You can call me Marta. So your grandfather passed, my condolences. Was he from Teresópolis?"

"No, no, he's American like me." _American_ , Marta thought with disgust. Not that she had a special bond with the name given to Abya Yala [13] by those filthy conquerors, but it took a special kind of pretension to think that your kind owned an entire continent. "But he lived in Brazil for a while in the sixties. He was a famous author, maybe you've heard of him: Harlan Thrombey."

Marta snapped the twig of sage in her hands, without even realizing, upon confirmation that her friend was actually dead. She knew it since the Winter Solstice.

***

Harlan showed up at dusk, sat on his favorite cozy chair by a basket of tangerines that she had picked earlier that day, and ate them without a care in the world while Cloak and Dagger slept happily at his feet. She sat by him, and he told her tales of his family, of his weird house, and his beloved work. The air turned into smoke upon leaving their mouths, so she lit the fire and brewed tea for them. She laughed at his anecdotes and cried with his misfortunes. He was still handsome, she reassured him, even sixty years later.

"You look exactly the same, my fairy." He retorted, sipping the tea and closing his eyes with pleasure. "It was summer when I left my house." He muttered. "You know I hate the winter."

"Well, you came without any invitation, swindler, you can't just show up and complain about the weather." She also didn't look exactly the same. Her hips were wider, her breasts were larger. She wasn't a maiden anymore like when he left; even if she was nobody's woman, her body had changed. But, humans couldn't see these kinds of things. They were too obtuse, even brilliant ones like Harlan. Marta was way too polite to correct him anyway.

"I'm sorry. I don't actually know how I ended up here. I went to bed to take a nap and just thinking about you brought me here. Which is weird, because I've been thinking about you almost every day for the past six decades and nothing ever happened."

"You could have just taken a plane and came to visit me, big author. Or taken a boat, like you did the first time that you appeared at the South American coast."

"How can an indebted man show his face to his creditors without payment, fairy?"

"Oh, so you knew that just writing ' _I owe everything I have to the Cabrera'_ on the first page of your books doesn't count as payment! Interesting!"

"I'll pay you, trust me, dear."

"How, Harlan? The sun is almost rising now and we don't have much more time. We know this is goodbye."

"Don't worry, Marta, I remember very well my promise and you shall have a child of my blood like you asked for." Marta felt the urge to cry with frustration and sadness. Harlan and his stupid games.

"I wanted you to stay and marry someone here and give me nephews and nieces so I could raise them and play with them and feel less alone, Harlan. But you left, and now all your children are old, and there's no one to play chess with me."

A strong wind blew the curtains out of their place on the windows, and the dawn light burst in the room. Marta looked up, spooked by the wind. When she turned her face to Harlan's chair again, it was empty.

  
***

"Hey, hey, uh, Marta, do you need something? Some salt, something to eat?" Ransom's voice brought her back to the present, way closer to her than it was before. Marta realized that she had been crying. She was almost two hundred years old, and she would still cry when her favorite humans died. _"Too soft,"_ Father would say. Ransom was holding her, and his hands in her arms were the only thing keeping Marta standing.

"No, no. I'm fine, I'm sorry."

"Wow, it's been a while since I've met a fan of my grandfather's work this emotionally invested like you are."

"It's not like that." She took a step back, wiping her face with the back of her hands. "I am a fan of his work, I mean, but I'm also a very emotional person. And… and Death is sad. I feel like human life is something so frail." He was looking very puzzled at her. "I'm sorry, I must seem ridiculous to you. Believe me, I seem ridiculous to me too."

"I'm very new with Latin American culture and all, so, just situate me: if I mention Harlan's death to any other of his Brazilian fans they'll react the same way as you or crying is part of your charm?" He was mocking her. Maybe Marta _could_ put a curse on him. "But I really need help with this whole debt thing of his and, except a couple people from the hotel that sent me here to ask about this Cabrera person, spirit, whatever, no one else speaks English so if you had some spare time..."

But he was Harlan's grandson, and he was there to settle the debt. Like the dogs, he was now hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a broke South American PhD candidate and I set up [this Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/nerdleoa) to anyone who wants to give a treat to my cats or buy me coffee in these difficult times.  
> [1] Quilombo da Serra: The "Quilombos" were free territories founded by enslaved African/Afro-Brazilian people that ran away from the plantations and settled on uncharted or Indigenous territory. Some of them - like Palmares - gathered tens of thousands of people until the 19th Century. They were places of resistance, that articulated the Abolitionist movement and had connections with freedom fighters in the cities. In the Quilombos, Native Americans, African/Afro-Brazilian, Romani, and destitute white people could find shelter and prosperous lives. That is, until the Brazilian Empire issued the order to vanish them all from the face of the Earth and ensured decades of slaughter. The "Quilombo da Serra" existed in the region that now comprises the towns of Teresópolis and Nova Friburgo during the 19th Century.  
> [2] The Timbiras were the First Nation to occupy that area of the mountains and they were partially killed by the Portuguese and the Germans that occupied the area and partially married the free black people during the time of the Quilombo. Also "pajé" is the name for Indigenous shamans in Brazil  
> [3] Caraíba: a common word in many native Brazilian languages to say "white"  
> [4] German folk song in which a mother is trying to convince her daughter to use the spindle, but the girl is afraid of prickling herself. Their father is a Fae from somewhere in that general vicinity. I had to give them a very white father because it made no sense to have a Native American forest guardian as white as Ana de Armas is without this. Also "weirdly shaped cottage" means "German Rustic Style"  
> [5] Beautiful tree from the Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil's National Tree  
> [6] It was due to the red pigment extracted from brazilwood that the Portuguese decided to stay in these lands. Now this tree is almost extinct, but it grows incredibly tall (12 meters/over 39 feet) and can live for centuries  
> [7] This is straight-up from my own childhood memories. Guavas are amazing and if you don't like them you're wrong  
> [8] The Second Day of November has a very different meaning in Brazil. We don't celebrate it like in Mexico, there's no huge festival to remember the ones that passed. It's a holiday, though, and work and schools close. Catholicism won this one and, when people do anything dead related on this day, it's going to the cemeteries dressed all in black to cry. Marta, being a Fae, has a different relation to it  
> [9] Not as famous as the Amazon or the Christ, the Serra do Mar has a beautiful Natural Reserve Park in the Rio de Janeiro state. The Serra itself is a mountain chain that goes through a huge part of the Brazilian coast  
> [10] Funny thing I noticed when the movie came out: Cabreira is an expression in Portuguese. Here, Marta's nickname will have a deeper meaning  
> [11] Maya's foul language can somewhat be translated to "holy shit" and she calls Marta "woman" as an endearingly exasperated term  
> [12] "Fairy Godmother" and "mommy"  
> [13] Abya Yala - Great Mother - How the Native Americans from the South refer to Latin America


	2. You don't know me at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And what would she want from him?"
> 
> "What do the Fae want in the tales, Ransom?"
> 
> "You can't answer me with another question."
> 
> "My turf, my rules."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in two days?! Yes, two chapters in two days.
> 
> This chapter was named after a line in Caetano Veloso's ["You don't know me"](https://open.spotify.com/track/7Fw7VPZTX461fLYo72UkV1).

Ransom showed up again around 6 P.M. The twilight cast shades of pink and orange in the sky, and the evening breeze made Marta get a shawl. Like every time she went to the street market, she traded or sold everything she came with, and she ended up with a collection of trinkets way more important to her than money. She had traded her rose bouquet for a large message carrier bag with the woman that she knew that worked respectfully with the cattle of the community for their leather. For some pomades, she got a colorful, long feather ornament for her hair; a turquoise pendant in a silver chain in exchange for a remedy for heartbreak; and for other different things, she got various rings that she would eventually wear and use some of them to decorate her trees, besides a bunch of other knick-knacks of different beauties and uses. She was wearing all of that and her new colorful shawl, gifted to her by a passing tourist from Italy whose stiff neck Marta had cured earlier that day; and gathering her things in her bags when he stopped in front of her.

"Did you keep any of the money that you earned today?" He asked, standing in a relaxed posture in front of her, with his hands inside his pockets. He was wearing a sweater over his shirt now, made with white wool in intricate patterns. Marta coveted it.

"Yes, I think I have about 30 reais here somewhere…" She rummaged through her bags, looking for the pretty coins that she liked to collect too, "Why? Do you need any?"

Ransom wasn't wearing his sunglasses anymore, and Marta found out that his eyes were almost the same color as the stone that was lodged between her breasts. Upon hearing her question, his eyebrows rose in his forehead, and he looked incredulous.

"I don't need your money, Marta."

"Why ask then?" She frowned at him and the weird conversation they were having. Ransom was a strange man. Marta put her bags on her shoulders, ready to leave. Maya had gone home earlier that day, so she would need to wait for her luck for someone that was heading to the isolated side of the city, closer to her house. She never had to wait too long. He put himself in front of her path, forcing her to stop. He could still be hers if he was a frog, right? Or a beautiful manacá bush. Anything would be less annoying.

"Never mind. Listen, are you going to help me out or not?" Noticing Marta's expression, he took a step to the side and started following her when she walked away. "With my grandfather's death wish and his debt. I drove all the way here from my hotel downtown, because the receptionist told me that this street market was the only place I could find information about La Cabrera, and no one here speaks English besides you. I… I can pay you, if you help me. He was loaded, and I'm to get a good chunk of it when..." She stopped and turned on her heels to look back at his handsome and annoying face.

"I don't need your money, Ransom." Marta felt a pettish type of pleasure in spitting Ransom's words back to him. _Money_ , that's all humans could think about for the past centuries, and she was tired of it. Harlan wanted money too. More fame than money, but money too. She gave him talent and inspiration, and he built himself his wealth. Ransom would probably want her to spin gold for him, as if they were in her father's teenage years. He looked defeated, and she revelled on it before grounding herself again. Harlan's debt, Harlan's wish, Harlan's grandson. She couldn't say no to her favorite swindler. "But I'll help you, for your grandfather's memory, and because I take the dead very seriously, especially on their day."

Relief washed over his features, and he gave her a very charming smile.

"Can I buy you dinner, so you can teach me about the Cabrera legends and what kind of ritual I should perform to please her? It's not like I believe in fairytales, but I believe that my grandfather was an insanely creative control freak, and there might be some test down the road to check if I really did what he asked for, when I go back to get my money."

Marta adjusted the straps of her bags, that were snagging on her shoulder, suspicious of what to say. Cloak and Dagger would be alright, there was enough food for them in their bowls, but she didn't like to go back home late at night. She definitely wouldn't take Ransom with her to her house. Not yet.

"I have a rented car parked just down the street, I can drive you home after. We can eat at a restaurant near my hotel, and I can show you my grandfather's journals from his time in Brazil and other possible clues to what he meant with this whole shenanigan. Then I will drive you back to your place."

"I live in the middle of nowhere."

"Not a problem. I like to drive."

"At night? On these roads? You know we're not in Kansas anymore, right?"

He laughed at her quip, this time with a little more warmth in his tone. Not a frog, maybe a tamarin. Definitely a Manacá bush.

"I'll take you on whatever yellow brick road you want, Dorothy, just please come dine with me."

"Ok. If you don't take me back home, I'll turn you into a gecko. And not a pretty one."

"Deal, you can turn me into a gecko or a horrible toad full of warts. Now, do you want me to carry your loot, or is it important to your pride to give yourself back pain?" She didn't tell him that she was stronger than he thought and definitely more resilient than him, and she handed him the bags.

"You don't believe me?" That was the only thing that hurt her, how men didn't take her threats seriously anymore.

"I'm just a yankee, what do I know? And, being a sorceress or not, you're a woman. That's dangerous enough to me." He had a half-smile on his lips when he called her dangerous, and that made Marta's heartbeat a little bit faster. She stopped looking at him. Mother told her to never get involved like that with humans, it was too dangerous. They were pets or, at best, friends for a while before Death came to claim them too soon. But he was her payment for Harlan's fortune and, oh, could she dare to want more than she should?

His car was a huge SUV that, thankfully, appeared to have traction on all wheels. If Marta wanted to go back home that night, he would need it to drive her through the auxiliary road. He unlocked it from a distance and walked in big strides in front of her to open the door for her, like a gentleman. She didn't mind. Cloak and Dagger were trained too.

"So, you lived all your life here?" He was the first to break the silence. Marta didn't feel all this need to fill every single moment with conversation, and she hated small talk. She answered him with just a non-committal "aham". "But you traveled?"

"Not really, no."

"How did you learn to speak English so well?"

"Books. A friend taught me in another life. The occasional movie."

"'Another life'? You are, what, twenty-something?"

"No."

"More? Less?"

"That's really not a question you ask a lady, Ransom."

"You're a lady, then?"

"One could say so."

They stayed in silence again. Marta let her eyes wander through the green of the forest surrounding the road, just occasionally interrupted by the yellow, pink, or white of an ipe's foliage. The colors were quickly vanishing with the daylight and being substituted by the aggressive lamps of the cars that never stopped hurting Marta's eyes. Cars were useful to go from one place to another, but she mostly hated everything about them and only learned how to drive due to Ruth's insistence. Soon, the city lights appeared too, even uglier and harsher than the cars. She avoided coming downtown as much as she could but, every time she saw herself in the cobblestoned streets, Marta would turn her gaze up to the sky. She knew she would be disappointed by the diminished number of stars, but she had to do it even so. To remind herself of the dangers of humankind.

Ransom parked in front of an executive hotel in the city. There were fancier ones on the outskirts of Teresópolis, but they were really isolated and more of an experience for someone that really wanted to enjoy tourism in the area, not solve a family issue and leave, as was his goal. A young man in uniform came from the parking service stand to take Ransom's car from his hands, as if the task of driving inside a garage and finding a parking spot was too menial for his greatness. Under Marta's attentive gaze, he gave the boy a R$20 bill with his keys.

The hotel lobby was not a luxurious one, and Marta supposed that the rooms weren't either. Not that she was an expert in hotels, she only knew what she learned from her books, the movies that she would see with her friends, and the stories that the humans told her. It was her first time actually stepping foot in one. She found it way too bright, too tacky, and too loud. Ransom went on to chat with the receptionist, and Marta decided to check on the poor plants confined to that lobby. To her horror, they were fake. She couldn't help the small surprised gasp that escaped her lips when she touched a leaf and found no life in it.

"When you're done being horrified by plastic plants, the receptionist called the local trattoria and reserved a table for us there. It's in a walking distance." Marta straightened up her back and followed Ransom out of the hotel. The streets were better than the inside of the buildings, at least she could see an occasional butterfly or hear the singing of birds. But the toxic vapors of the cars and their loud noises made her dizzy, and, without realizing, she grabbed Ransom's arm to keep walking. "You really hate the city." He stated, as a matter of fact.

"Yes." She had to control her urge to squeak when a bus passed in full speed by them, and she squeezed his arm instead.

"Perhaps, if you could stand going on a plane, you would like Massachusetts, more specifically, Harlan's old house. It's outside of Boston, in the middle of nowhere, and he left it to me, when I'm finished with this weird task."

"Did he?" A car honked loud up the street, and she turned, spooked, towards the sound. Ransom used his free hand to gently rub Marta's knuckles with his thumb. His sudden gesture of compassion scared her more than the cars for reasons that she couldn't exactly pinpoint.

"Yeah. He left it to La Cabrera, more specifically, as a huge part of his assets, but he left me in charge of performing the ritual to her and, then, getting what's in my rights as to my inheritance." She was still distracted with his absentminded caress on her hand and so aware that his bicep was very firm under her grip, that it took her a few seconds to understand the meaning behind his words.

"He did what now?" Ransom had stopped walking; they had arrived at the restaurant. It was small and seemed almost cozy.

"I know. I told you the old man was kind of crazy. He left practically everything to this Brazilian legend that no one outside this tiny and irrelevant town has ever heard of. And left me to find her."

Marta couldn't move. Why would Harlan leave to her his fortune in another country that she had no interest in ever going to visit, what's to say to own property in it? To manage his funds? She didn't even have legal documents! How can someone declare to be 190 years old, give it or take, to any government? She wanted a child; she wanted company and someone to love her for some years. Perhaps to be a silent figure in Harlan's family for generations and be something to someone again. That's what she asked of him, when he ate the cake of great talents that she baked her. Then he convinced her to drink cachaça [1] with him while they played cards, saying that she would leave with him if he won, and he would give her Cloak and Dagger if he lost. He lost. She laughed and danced at his defeat, singing in German like Father used to do. He danced with her, they spun in circles on the grass behind her house until the alcohol made her drowsy. She slept in his embrace while he ran his fingers through her hair. She woke up to an empty house with the worst headache of the century and the dogs tied to her porch. She lost.

Now Ransom came to her, being the opposite of everything she ever wanted and telling her she had the claims of a fortune that she never coveted. She would trade all of that for his fluffy sweater and a couple children with his smile that she could teach how to play chess.

He pulled a chair for her and ordered food and beverages in a mix of mimic and a ridiculously broken Spanish. Marta couldn't care less; she wanted to go home. Her head was a mess. And she had promised to answer his questions about her own legends. She was bound to her promise, and she couldn't lie. She wanted to throw up.

"Marta, do you need a glass of water? You're very pale." His voice was careful and low, how people talk to wounded animals or children. He was probably afraid that she would start to cry again.

"Yes." She answered, feeling herself being pulled back to him again. There was a pitcher on the table, and he served her, putting the glass in her shaking hands. "I'm better in my environment but this place is nice."

It was the truth. The restaurant had dim lights and candles on the tables. It smelled of Italian cuisine and the cedarwood that the huge wood oven burned all night. The tablecloths were of nice cotton, and there were linen napkins on the plates in front of them. Marta drank the water - not as good as the one from her rivers, but good - and felt a little better. She would find a loophole in Harlan's plan, as he found a loophole in her request and part herself from his assets. That probably meant that she would have to part from Ransom too, and she had no idea how this would work. They were in uncharted territory.

"Thank you for being so nice to me. I'm sorry for being a burden."

"You're the burden? I show up in your life in the middle of nowhere, barely introduce myself, ask you to come with me to dinner away from your home after what probably was a tiring day of work, ask you to help me with a complicated and bizarre task, and you're the burden? No, Marta, I couldn't hold anything against you. And you didn't even let me pay you for your troubles, I have to settle for dinner dates and being nice." She felt herself blush at his words. It should be their bond that made her so involved with him. That, and the fact that it had been way too long since anyone even held her hand.

"Is this a date?" Marta asked with a small smile, feeling bold.

"I told the receptionist to recommend me a restaurant that was worthy to bring you to. That's where she put us. There are candles on the table and jazz playing in the background. It doesn't have to be a date if you don't want to, but, since we are both here, why not enjoy ourselves?" Ransom was very relaxed, leaning on the table closer to Marta, when he answered her.

The layers of meaning in his sentences weighed on her. He was a man of the world. A playboy. She was interesting because there was nothing better for him to do in Teresópolis. He would forget her as soon as she released him from the debt, and he was eventually going to meet more beautiful and cultured women in Rio, São Paulo, Boston, New York… Anywhere he wanted to go. With Harlan's wealth, the world was his oyster. But, if she was really planning to make him free, and he was going to leave her anyway, what was the harm in enjoying this? The waiter came with a bottle of red wine, and, even though the last time Marta drank was with his grandfather, she raised her glass to toast with him and delighted herself in the ripe taste of the vine's fruit.

"To our date, then." She said, clinking her glass with his.

He made her laugh with a few anecdotes about his neurotic family and amazed her with stories of his travels. When the main course - a personal pizza for each of them - arrived, Marta was giddy from the wine.

"It's your turn now. What can you tell me about La Cabrera?"

"This doesn't work like that, Ransom. You need to ask me more specific questions about A Cabrera and I'll tell you if I can answer."

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm going to help you on my own terms." She rested her glass, even though Ransom had filled it up again. Was he trying to intoxicate her? "I promise you I won't lie."

"Ok. What is she? A ghost? Some deity? A demon? Is she dangerous?" Ransom was half-joking, but his cheeks were also flushed. He took his sweater out, and under it, he wore a simple blue shirt with short sleeves and a V-neck that showed his clavicles and a little peek of his chest. It was less than what Marta's dress allowed for the viewer, since it had no sleeves, just thin straps made of the same Renaissance lace that covered her whole body.

"Many questions to answer here. Through the times, she and her kind had many names. Different people will give different answers to what they are. If you go ask the pastor in the evangelical church down the street, he would probably say that, yes, she's a demon. In the Old Continent, they liked to be called Fae, here, they're considered Entities. A Cabrera, most specifically, could be called a Cabocla [2], but that definition would be incomplete too. She guards the forest and is a protector of the animals and the children." Ransom took a sip of his wine, and Marta could feel his eyes dancing over her exposed skin when she folded her shawl in her lap.

"Harlan was neither as far as I know when he came to Brazil. Why would she be so important to him?"

"I'm afraid that only he could tell you what A Cabrera meant to him, Ransom. I can only say that she's known to have her occasional favorites. Every once in a while the people from that district talk about disappeared hikers, vanishing tourists, blessed artists… Some come back to the world and tell stories of being very loved or severely punished. Some attribute their luck, their children, or their gifts to this spirit."

"He published his first best-seller six months after going back to America."

"A favorite, perhaps?" She drank a little more of her wine to hide her smile behind the glass.

"Yeah, I think so." He took a few bites of his pizza, but Marta knew he wasn't done. "Won't you answer my last question?"

"If she's dangerous?" He nodded. Marta put her glass to the side again, with a full smile. "Well, earlier today you said you thought every woman was dangerous, including me. Why should I disagree now?"

Ransom didn't laugh, he held Marta's gaze very seriously, as if assessing if she -- with her 168cm tall and 60kg of weight [3], small hands, and nice smile -- could actually be a threat to him. He was the first to look away.

"And what would she want from him?"

"What do the Fae want in the tales, Ransom?"

"You can't answer me with another question."

"My turf, my rules."

"I don't know what the Fae want. I was never a fan of fairy tales and mythology. I preferred to play sports as a boy."

"Then I can only recommend you to do your research. It's your quest, your debt to settle. I can't tell you what to do." He groaned, frustrated, and Marta's smile grew bigger.

"This amuses you." Ransom accused her, in a comical tone. "My ineptitude amuses you."

"I find it very hard to believe that a man that uses 'ineptitude' correctly in a sentence is the vapid blonde that you're trying to sell me, meu caro. [4]"

He didn't argue with her, and Marta took the opportunity to eat. The pizza was good, and, somehow, he had known to order her one that had pears, blue cheese, and nuts. Marta was already a little uncomfortable to eat food that she couldn't confirm if it was made respectfully; meat would be impossible to her.

"Why Cabrera? Why is this forest spirit named The Goatherd?"

"Where did you see this definition?"

"In an English-Spanish dictionary, where else?"

It was Marta's turn to groan and facepalm herself.

"I can't decide if you're really dumb or just a general asshole. Ransom, we don't speak Spanish. I've been putting off correcting you because I thought that you knew that we speak Portuguese, but you had learned Spanish in school or during university and, yeah, it works, to a degree. It's not 'La Cabrera', it's 'A Cabrera'. And, in Portuguese, it's an expression that means 'Guarded Woman'. It's not her name, it's a nickname based on how people perceive her personality."

Marta was very surprised when Ransom burst with laughter, the most open and honest he had been so far around her. His eyes were closed and full of tears, his face was red, and he was rocking his body on his chair, trying to calm himself.

"Oh my god. That explains so many stares I've received, and here I was just thinking that my Spanish was terrible."

"Your Spanish _is_ terrible." Marta pointed out, beginning to laugh too.

"My Spanish is terrible and I'm an idiot who was imagining all this time this goat-woman with huge horns and asking myself why my grandfather lived with goats for three years!" This made her join him in the laughing fit. It had been a while for her to feel at ease with someone too. Maybe it was just the wine, maybe it was the spellbinding that she still had to take care of, but she thought less and less of him as a toad. The other people in the restaurant stared at them, and even the waiters looked cross with them for disturbing the place's atmosphere. Ransom took a few deep breaths, drank some water, and added: "So, from all we know, she can look like anyone."

"Yes."

"Even you." His tone was light, but there was danger in his eyes. Marta had to force herself to smile.

"That would mean that I'm at least in my 70s. Do you really want to go there, meu caro?" Pretending to be vain about her age worked to deflect the question, and Ransom raised his hands in a symbol of defeat. The mockery returned stronger to his face:

"No, my lady, I will never return to the subject of your age again."

"Bom menino." Marta was feeling full and relaxed. She wanted to go home. She couldn't help a yawn that escaped from her mouth.

"Let me order our check and we can go, ok?"

"Sure. Do you mind if I go wait on the sidewalk? Being cooped up in here is making me anxious."

"No problem at all. I'll meet you when I'm finished here, and we can walk to the hotel to get my car."

With the night wind cold on her face, a wave of sobriety washed over her, and Marta realized that Ransom had forgotten the invitation for her to go to his hotel room and look at his grandfather's journals. Was the date that bad? She had no idea how these things should work; she had never been on an official date before. There was a poet that courted her under Mother's watch when she was a teen, in the 1890s. She thought that he filled all the proper requisites of male beauty, but he was never able to make her heart race. Even so, Marta let him kiss her once. There was a warrior that appeared in the early 1970s, a few years after Harlan's departure. She was injured, running from the Army, and her stolen car broke on the road [5]. Marta nursed her back to health, she paid her back by teaching her how sweet lovemaking could be. And then Marta got way too involved in raising Iramaya, who showed up at her door as a scrawny teen, running away from her abusive stepfather, and no lover occupied her mind ever again.

Ransom got out a few minutes later, putting his sweater back on and inhaling a big gulp of the cold night air.

"Are you ready to go?" Marta decided that it could be just the magic, but she really liked how his turquoise eyes felt on her skin, as well the shape of his mouth and his chin. Harlan would have to forgive her, but she even decided that he was more handsome than his grandfather.

"You don't have more questions?"

"You're clearly tired, I don't want to impose anymore. If you want to, we can meet again tomorrow, after I type on Google 'what do the Fae want in the tales?' and find out what kind of weird shit I'll have to do to get my inheritance."

"Take me to your room and I'll show you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Brazilian beverage, made of distilled sugarcane.  
> [2] Religious figure in Afro-Brazilian/Indigenous religions. They're believed to be spirits of Natives that died or guardians of their secrets. But they're extra-corporeal and utilize the body of mediums to communicate with this world.  
> [3] 5ft6'' tall and 130 pounds  
> [4] My dear  
> [5] And here I go again, casually mentioning that Brazil lived through a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. Marta's warrior was a guerrilla fighter and the Army was The Baddies


	3. Adeus, adeus, céu azul (Não rasga a pele, fere o coração)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She broke the kiss and took a few steps back. This was a mistake. She needed to free him. She needed to part from Harlan's inheritance. She couldn't want this so much. Then she saw what she did: the butterflies flying in circles around them, the concrete sidewalk cracked with green sprouts rising against all odds, and the glow in her skin reflected in Ransom's shocked expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is named after two lines of MC Tha and Jaloo's song ["Céu Azul"](https://open.spotify.com/track/79KiCD4avGaMr7WvjJVjIV) (Blue Sky) and they translate to: "Goodbye, goodbye, blue sky/It doesn't tear the skin, but it hurts my heart"
> 
> Warnings: there will be some violence in this chapter and there will be it for the rest of the story. There will be also mentions of incest but no incest happened or will happen here.

He didn't say anything to her brazen proposition. Every passing moment left Marta feeling more aware of how ridiculous she seemed and how much she embarrassed herself. She wrapped her shawl around herself more and focused her gaze on the sidewalk, wishing that she had the power to instantly vanish.

"You know what? Never mind. Sure, I can meet you tomorrow for lunch, you will just need to pick me up at the road near my house, but we won't play this dating game anymore, okay? I'm helping you bec..."

In an instant, he was everywhere around her. His deep smell of spices and wood was the first thing that Marta registered. The second and third were, at once, his big soft hands on her face and his lips on her mouth. Marta clung to him, almost letting her small purse and shawl fall to the ground with the force of her embrace. She was never bound to someone like that. She had many godchildren, but kissing Ransom was getting a stolen piece of herself back. She could feel the magic crackling in her skin, running through her like ecstatic energy.

When one of his hands found the small of her back and pulled her to him, Marta knew before she saw it: they were surrounded by yellow butterflies in the middle of the night, in the city. She didn't care, though, and chose to open her lips to explore his mouth, running her own hands to the short hairs of his nape. The growing hairs in his face pricked her skin in a delicious and new way. She missed the soft curves of her warrior, whom she let go after a couple years with an amulet of protection and a broken heart, knowing more than ever that Mother was right when talking about humans. But Ransom… Ransom made her so _alive_. When he moaned a little in her mouth, Marta felt something clicking inside of her, gentle as the rising of the moon. She… She couldn't.

She broke the kiss and took a few steps back. This was a mistake. She needed to free him. She needed to part from Harlan's inheritance. She couldn't want this so much. Then she saw what she did: the butterflies flying in circles around them, the concrete sidewalk cracked with green sprouts rising against all odds, and the glow in her skin reflected in Ransom's shocked expression.

"Marta, what…?" He couldn't even finish his sentence, way too confused. Poor gringo boy probably never saw magic in his life before. She was already walking away from him, shaking her head and trying not to cry again.

"I'm so sorry."

***

She ran like a scared squirrel. He would leave, he needed to leave. If he stayed, he would resent her forever. And his forever was too little, too late. Maybe she could meet Alice and go live with her? Perhaps she could travel too, like Father. He could even be alive yet, from what she knew. She stopped a few blocks past his hotel, in a deserted street, and supported herself on a tree to breathe. The sentient being inside it responded immediately, and, around Marta's hand, moss grew freely like a carpet.

"Dona Marta?" A voice called from behind her. It was a man in his mid-thirties with a vaguely familiar face. He was wearing the hotel's uniform, but Marta felt like that lobby wasn't the first time she had seen him. "Are you alright? Did that gringo hurt you?"

She breathed a little more, trying to compose herself and rein in that terrifying rush of power that she still felt, just a little weakened now that she was away from Ransom.

"No, no. It was no big deal. Thanks for being worried." Now she would have to go back to the hotel to get her stuff and find out how she would go back home without talking to him. Oh no, she would need to do _something_ about the spellbinding, especially now that she found out that Harlan stole some of her magic when he tricked her and, somehow, that her stolen magic ended up in Ransom. Or Ransom's bond with her. It was really terrifying to live in a world without any elders. This time, Time or Death would have to cave in and let her talk to her grandmother.

"You're so far from your normal street market, do you need a ride back home? I live in that district and my shift at the hotel just ended." Blessed be the most useful gift inherited from Father: her luck never ceased to wonder her.

"Thank you so much, I would love to." She could deal with Ransom in the morning.

"And you were running, I have some water here in my backpack if you want to hydrate a little. We will get at least a good half hour on the road, and I know that you will still have to figure out how to get to your home when we part ways in the district."

"I want it, thank you." He handed her a bottle of water, from which Marta drank a few sips before having to stop. Why did these city people drink such horrible tasting water? "Our encounter was such a blessing tonight. Tell me how can I repay you."

"Ah, don't worry about that. I'll think of something." He said, smiling. Marta smiled back at him. The nice man - she was very embarrassed at being unable to remember his name - walked with her to an alley where he had parked his car, and she couldn't have been more grateful when he opened the door for her. The wine combined with the emotional rollercoaster of the day left her feeling drowsy and tired. Maybe she would find a meadow by the road to sleep, when they arrived at the district. She strapped herself in and saw the man lock the car doors. She was going to ask him where they had met, but then he was fumbling with his backpack, and Marta dozed off.

***

The thing that woke her was the searing pain as if her wrists were on fire. In her fog of despair, it took her a while to understand what was happening and where she was. The car was still in the same place, the engine was turned off. The seemingly nice man that lured her there was saying something to her, but there was a high pitched sound that cut through everything else and deafened her to his words. The sound was her screams. Her wrists were on fire, she was sure of it, and there never was a pain like this in her life. She couldn't move, just scream. She remembered, somehow, in the middle of her trance, Cloak and Dagger and Iramaya, as well as how she was the second to last of her kind. She thought of Ransom and how unfair it was to lose him in the night that he found her. In her haze, she stopped for a moment to breathe, realizing that the bitter water that she drank earlier was probably laced with something - only that could explain why her limbs were so heavy. The man was touching her now. He had an empty glass bottle in his hands, and he kept trying to make her fit in it. He knew what she was. He was severely misinformed in believing that he could capture her that way.[1]

Marta had no idea if she could move her fingers, but her hands and luck never failed her against any lock; while he was distracted with the frustration of his failed capture and her unrelenting screams, she tried the car door. It opened. But, the irony of ironies, Marta was still strapped by the safety belt and had used her last strength to attempt this move. She couldn't even scream anymore. This only made her captor angry, and he hit her with the bottle. The glass cracking against her skull would be her last memory of this.

  
***

She woke up with soft hands on her face trying to brush away the glass shards and blood that covered her head and shoulders. Her wrists still hurt, but it wasn't an active fire anymore. She opened her eyes a little, letting a small sob escape her abused throat when she saw Ransom crouched in front of her.

"I'm s..."

"I swear that, if you say that you're sorry, I'll have to punch this car so much that people will think it is a postmodern sculpture." He said, in a very angry tone. Ransom was now pressing something to her head wound to stop the bleeding. Seeing his blue shirt, she realized that it was his beautiful sweater. "Don't worry, yours is not the first blood it encountered today."

Marta swallowed, trying to focus on his face and remind herself that she was safe now.

"Where is he?"

"Marta..."

"I need to see him. Where is he?"

He let out a tired sigh. "He's on the floor by the other side of the car. I just pulled him out and knocked him cold. You were my priority."

"Right. I need to see him." She tried to get up, but her legs were simply not working. "Ransom, I need to see him."

"Marta, we need to _leave_ , now. When the police arrive, I have a strong hunch that you won't be able to answer their questions as they want to write them."

"We will leave, but I need to make sure that he can't hurt me or anyone else ever again. And, also, not tell anything to the cops. Please, if you help me do this, there's no more debt, you're free."

If he didn't understand her sentence, Ransom didn't let her know either. He helped her stand by lifting up by her waist and left her supporting herself for a moment on the car. Using her remnants of strength to keep his sweater pressed to the side of her head, while he retrieved her things that were still inside the car. With every passing waking moment, she felt stronger. The electric current when Ransom touched her was still there and more. Every single place he had put his hands on her was warm.

On the floor by her feet, Marta saw the iron handcuffs that her captor used to cut her magic and restrain her. Her wrists were a horrible mess of flesh wounds and boils. She wanted her mother to be there. Even Alice would make do. Marta would have to take care of this alone for weeks. Ransom turned back to her with her purse crossed on his chest and wearing her shawl as a scarf, and, unceremoniously, he lifted her up from the floor, cradling her against his broad chest like she weighed nothing. He walked with her in his arms to the unconscious man, and Marta signaled that she needed to be on the floor too. He crouched when she got on her knees, as if she was still under grave threat. From the warm moisture gathering on her scalp, she would say that this wasn't an entirely paranoid assumption.

"What are we thinking? A toad full of warts?" She asked him, trying to smile.

"Can you really morph people like that?"

"I haven't tried in 50 years. The last time I had reason to do it, some rats got the chance to live their lives as their real selves."

"A cockroach." He stated, very seriously.

She put one hand on his arm and another on the ground, trying to summon all the energy she still had and overcome whatever poison that horrible man gave her. Marta could feel her magic flowing from Ransom to her. Just the simple act of them touching their skins now was enough for her to access that hidden power.

In that moment, she found out why her attacker looked familiar. He had been kind of a client of her stand for a couple of years now. He would appear without saying much, and she could never really feel what he needed from her. Now she knew why: he wanted to make her his captive genie. His body shrunk and shrunk - unlike Gregor Samsa [2], he wasn't going to be a huge bug. Instead, she wanted him to be a very insignificant one. Marta almost fainted when it was done. She just needed to go home and to sleep, in that order.

As soon as Ransom saw the pair of antennas appearing from under a fold of his uniform, he stood up, took Marta in his arms again, and stepped on her aggressor with the sole of his shoe. She sighed, content, and nuzzled on the smell of his shirt.

"Hey, hey, I'm sorry but you can't sleep. I'll need to get in the hotel with you all bloody and find out how I can make them not call the police."

"They won't call the police, Ransom. I'm tired."

"No sleeping." He shook her while walking, making Marta blink awake again. "I think you have a concussion and I'm not letting you doze off, Sleeping Beauty. I can't take you to a hospital, so no sleeping on me. That's not how this tale goes."

"Isn't it?" She asked, trying to suppress a yawn.

"No. I'm still angry at you. We still need to fight. And we also need to talk about how you turned a guy into a fucking cockroach, and I crushed him, and now there's one less creep in the world."

"Ransom, we don't need to fight. You're free."

"I heard it when you said it the first time, we are still going to fight sometime later this week." He stopped walking. They were almost in front of the hotel again. "Are you sure they're not going to call the police?"

"You're in Rio de Janeiro, Ransom, people don't call the police unless they really have to."

"And a woman in your state does not constitute an emergency by the concepts of Brazilians?"

"It's late, no one will care. I'm certain of it, because I can feel my luck thrumming into my veins." He adjusted her in his arms and walked into the hotel lobby, almost not showing the doubts she knew that he had.

The lamps on the hallways were exceptionally weak, and every single hotel worker was out of their way or sleeping. The elevator's doors opened with a ping as soon as they approached it, without anyone inside. Ransom put her on the ground during the elevator ride, supporting her with an arm on her waist and letting her put her full weight against his body. She could see the stress and the sweat on his forehead. She realized what he was doing as the doors opened again, and, without a word, he carried her to his room's door. Marta had verbally forgiven his debt; she had proclaimed that he was free. But he was a man. He wanted gold or something. He would care for her, and then he would ask to be paid tenfold. That was ok. This would give Marta the time to heal and to find out how to break their bond without having the feeling of a phantom limb again, always out of reach. It would be nice for a change to be cared for, too, even if her carer had ulterior motives.

His room was exactly what she had imagined: simple, executive, and decorated in muted colors. A double bed occupied the center of it, and ugly paintings hung on the walls. A big suitcase rested on the corner of the room, indicating either that Ransom was really bad at packing or that he came prepared to stay for a while. Not that he would need to anymore.

He helped her to the simple bathroom ensuite; she wanted to say that those tamed waters wouldn't help her much, but her throat hurt and she was too tired to keep fighting. He sat her on the closed toilet and inspected the cuts on her head.

"It's weird. They seemed bigger twenty minutes ago." He muttered. "Do you heal fast?"

"For a human, yes." Speaking hurt her. "There's really no reason to worry about a concussion, but I'll be sore all over for a few days."

His frown wouldn't ease, even with her trying to calm him.

" _Sore_. I thought that you couldn't lie."

"There's a paste in my purse and clean gauze and some medical tape in it. If you help me bandage myself and take me home, I should be alright."

"Do you absolutely need to go home tonight?" He asked, rummaging through her purse, which was still crossed over his chest. "I can drive if I take a cup of coffee, but I would rather not."

Marta didn't know what to say, and he didn't give her the opportunity, leaving the room. When he was back, he had clean towels on his hands.

"No, I don't _need_ to go home. My dogs will be alright until noon, and I can manage."

"You can manage… what?"

"After you patch me up, I can find a nice patch of gra..."

"Are you insane?" His voice raised an octave, and he pressed his hands on his face.

"Quê?"

"I carried you for five blocks and the hallways and the distance from the door to the bathroom. You are in no condition to go anywhere alone. I can sleep on the floor, Marta, I'll survive it."

"Quê?"

"Can you take a shower alone, or do you want me to give you some version of a sponge bath?"

"I… can shower, I guess."

"Ok, don't lock the door. In case you collapse in my bathroom, I would rather not have to break this down to get to you, please." And he left, leaving her purse behind.

Upon closer inspection, Marta found out that he had separated one of his t-shirts for her too. Standing up was still hard, but she could manage by supporting herself on the walls. The hot water relaxed her aching muscles, and Marta ended up lying on the ground, sobbing and hoping that the shower's noise would muffle her cry. It was pointless. Ransom was in the bathroom minutes later, handling her as if she was a ragdoll and making sure she was really clean before letting her out and enveloping her in a towel. Her scalp almost didn't bleed anymore. The only thing that wouldn't heal quickly were her wrists. Iron was hard, and, more often than not, it could turn into ugly infections that could even kill a Fae. He helped her get dry and get dressed in his shirt that looked almost like a dress on her. He took the paste that she mentioned, a secret recipe that her grandmother had taught her when she was a girl, and spread it carefully on her wrists, her scalp, and the tiny cuts on her face. It smelled like honey, chamomile, and a faint pungent odor of the tree barks that she would put in it. Ransom wrapped her wrists in bandages with a care that Marta didn't know he could have.

"You should use some of this on your knuckles. In the morning, your hands will be healed." He grunted on her suggestion without saying anything to her. She couldn't blame him. Marta braced herself on the walls until arriving at the double bed in the center of the room. He had put a comforter, some sheets, and a couple of pillows on the floor. "I know you don't want to hear my apologies now, but I feel bad that you're sleeping on the ground. If anyone is going to sleep on the floor, it should be me because I'm used to it. I don't get why you're doing this. There's no debt anymore, Ransom."

"Marta, I really don't want to fight with you today. Now it's my time to shower. Just lay down and accept that you will be cared for today and try to have some sleep." He didn't wait for her answer and closed the bathroom door.

He didn't lock it, though. It was as if Marta was frail, and he needed to be able to come at her smallest demands. But she wasn't. She had spent the most part of the last century alone, and she had nursed hundreds of people back to health during her lifespan. She nursed herself back to health when she was sick ever since her mother passed, in the first lights of the 20th Century. He wanted her on the bed. Fine. But no one would sleep on the floor then. She got on all fours on the carpet, grabbed the things that he had shaped like a bed, and threw them back onto the actual bed. She put the comforter as a barrier between them and lay down, waiting.

When Ransom left the bathroom, he muttered a long series of foul words about her stubbornness and how she was insane and would drive him insane too, but he got on the bed. Neither of them slept. Marta was staring at the ceiling. That room, with its artificial canned air circulating and the sounds of the city outside, would be enough to take her sleep away on a normal day. But there had been nothing normal about the past twelve hours.

"You're angry with me."

He let a desperate sound leave his throat before answering.

"Yes. I'm angry with you. And with Harlan. And with myself. You can relax, there's plenty of anger to go around. Oh, yeah, I'm still angry at the fact that I could only kill that cockroach once."

"You're angry because I didn't tell you who I was straight away?" Marta could feel more tears welling up inside her.

"No. If you straight up told me that you're a fairy and who knows how many years old you are, I would have thought you are crazy."

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"I do. For different reasons."

"What are them?"

"I lied to you."

"You think I'm crazy because you lied to me?"

"No. I'm just stating that I lied to you. I came here to look for you."

"Yes, you've told me, you came to look for The Cabrera."

"This too. But Harlan had drawings and a picture of you on his things. I didn't ask people around about the legend; I showed your picture to the receptionist and asked if she knew any relatives of that woman. She told me her granddaughter worked at that street market and that your name was Marta. So, I lied."

"You thought I was the granddaughter of…?"

"The woman in the picture and Harlan. I thought we were cousins."

"Oh."

"That's why I had no reaction when you asked to come here."

"But you had invited me before."

"I was toying with you. I had no intention to follow through."

Marta's heart hurt with those words. Ransom wasn't telling her anything new. But it hurt.

"You wanted to find out if I was a threat to your inheritance."

"Which you are."

"I'm not."

"But you are."

"Ransom, I'm almost two hundred years old. There's not a single official document from the Brazilian or any other government stating that I exist. And I can spin as much gold as I want if I want money."

"You can what now?" Marta chose to ignore Ransom's shock to keep trying to convince him that he was, in fact, free,

"I have no interest in Harlan's properties or in leaving here."

"See? There's it." He turned on his side to look at her on the bed. Marta turned too, and, in the darkness of that room, she could barely distinguish his features. She had no idea of what he was feeling.

"What?"

"The reason I'm angry with you." She waited while he took a deep breath. "You're 200, and that's an age gap, if there ever existed one, and I'm probably just one of the many lives that you got in exchange for your gifts." She wanted to tell him the truth, but he kept talking. "But I've lived my entire life with this weird emptiness, this void that itched in the back of my mind and made me despise everyone."

"That's..."

"Let me finish." He silenced her, and Marta let him. "When I decided to bet on the incest lotto earlier today and kiss you, I finally understood it all. It was you. You were what Harlan took from me. And you hate it. We created magic, and you hated it and left, and I almost lost you forever because you'd rather go inside a creeper's car than stay and face me. I'm really angry at you for almost dying."

Marta had no words to say back to this. She got everything so wrong in so many ways that she didn't even know how to make it better. Well, maybe a little.

"I was planning on freeing you. When I ran."

"But you haven't, because I still feel it."

"I'll find out how to free you, and you won't need to feel it anymore."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why don't you want me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Some legends in Brazil say that you can capture the Saci-Pererê (a being from our folklore) with a bottle like that. But there are differences to the ritual that The Man did here  
> [2] The main character in Kafka's most famous book "The Metamorphosis". It's basically about a public servant that wakes up one day transformed into a huge cockroach.


	4. Você tem meia hora pra mudar a minha vida

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why are you so eager to get rid of me?"  
> "Which version of the truth do you want?"  
> "The brutal one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is named after two lines in Adriana Calcanhotto's ["Vambora"](https://open.spotify.com/track/6lPlwhFv8jeMlXEncHFykd) (it has the double meaning of "Come on" or "Come with me") and it translates to "You have half an hour to change my life".  
> There's a brief mentioning of a minor character being raped centuries before the timeline for this story. It's literally one sentence on the subject.  
> There's also a really brief mentioning of ancient Fae eating humans in this chapter. Also, just a line or two. But the theme of Anthropophagy (human eating) will increase during the story, although no humans will actually be eaten here.

"You don't want this." She whispered.

"What do you know about what I want?" Ransom spit back. Marta reached to touch his hand and was surprised when he let her entwine her fingers with his.

"When I was born, the King and the Queen of Portugal and Algarves had arrived to this country just a year before."[1] The last time Marta told this story was a starry night in May, with Maya and Bia sitting in the forest with her and eating nuts by the campfire. Maya had her first period that day. "My father came with one of the tutors for the Royal children and left when died of the gout. He wandered around until he came to these mountains. The street with the restaurant where we ate used to be the river where my mother taught me how to swim. Can you feel it under the pavement, trapped and dirty and angry? I can."

His thumb was following the lines of her hand now.

"In my household, we spoke ancient Tupi and an old Saxon dialect that morphed into many European languages. I had a different name. I have a name, a real name that's not christened nor a tale. When the Army's Empire killed dozens of my friends, humans and fae, my parents could just help us hide and run. My grandmother stayed to fight. She was a warrior, she had taught the humans how to put poison in their arrows when the fire was young. And she died there. She couldn't even become a tree like we are supposed to, because the Army burned everything to the ground and salted the earth when they left. My father left too, not long after. And I stayed. I care for my mother's tree. I care for the people that would put me in a glass bottle if they could. It's my fate, Ransom, to stay and see what I love wilt and die. My sister and I… we are the last ones here. We are bound to be the last."

"What did you ask of Harlan?"

"A child."

They stayed in silence for what it seemed a long time, and Marta almost fell asleep.

"I should have known. I have always been the less than good version of him." His voice was so strangled, so tiny. Marta then realized that he probably grew up in the shadow of the magically infused version of his grandfather, inhumanly successful in everything that he put himself up to do.

"No, that's not true."

"What happens to you when you lie? Just so I can brace myself to whatever will come after this bullshit."

"It's not bullshit. Harlan was my best friend, but I've never coveted him for me. I didn't want to bear his child. My idea, in 1966, when I gave him the power to have everything he wished for, was that he could stay in Brazil. Or at least in South America. That he could find a human woman here and give me their first child."

Ransom let a hollow laugh escape his throat.

"What exactly did you plan to do with my mother?"

"Raise her." Marta said, shrugging. "Harlan and his wife would come to visit often, I still wanted to be his friend. She could have a relationship with her brothers. I would teach her all my secrets if she wanted to learn them."

"She wouldn't. Linda has absolutely no interest in witchcraft. She's even more ambitious than Harlan was." This made Marta sad. Would her secrets die with her? "Maybe my cousin, Meg, would _love_ to be your priestess or whatever title you wanted to give her. But you would have to sleep with a knife under your pillow for the rest of her life."

"She's treacherous?"

"She was the first one to teach me how dangerous women can be."

"Maybe I would like her." Marta felt herself smile, imagining Meg helping her crush leaves to fine powders and care for the animals in the Reserve.

"I'm sure you would. That's how she gets to you."

"And I suppose _you_ wouldn't betray me?"

"Would I be successful if I tried?" His tone was light, but anxious.

"Probably."

"I have no interest in becoming a forest guardian or a street vendor for homemade pomades. No matter how good your pomades are." His hands were healed already; she felt the new skin when she held his hand. The magic flow between them and the pomade had healed her scalp completely, and now the pain in her wrists was just a faint throb. The human drug that the cockroach gave her was out of her system now, Marta's head was clear of any fog.

"I know. You don't have to." She scooted closer to him on the bed, to see if she could persuade him with her whispers and her breath. It used to work. "There's a mansion outside Boston and a huge bank account and everything else that Harlan left to me waiting for you there. You can go, Ransom. You're free." Those words left a pang in her heart, but they were true. She had no interest in seeing him die.

"Bullshit." That was the only thing he said before kissing her again.

Marta's whole body hummed in response. His body was on top of hers, all she could do was just accept it and embrace him with all of the strength she had. He bit her lower lip and scratched her skin on purpose with his cheeks. Ransom was marking her all over with his scent. No one ever felt like her pack before. No one felt like home. " _Leave me, leave me, leave me"_ thrummed her heart with every new kiss on her jaw and her neck. She could feel the caged river roaring under the asphalt and concrete. She could feel the trees with their roots severed to give way to the sidewalks. She could feel the dimmed light of the stars. And Ransom, all around her, made her captive too. This time it was him who stopped. Marta opened her eyes and saw him propping himself on his elbows, his beautiful turquoise eyes staring intently at her like she was a miracle. The amber light that illuminated the room made his hair look almost golden.

"You're glowing."

Marta raised her hand to his face, and she could see the light on her skin, as warm and as tender as the sunrise. The objects in the room were painted in pink, orange, and golden tones under Marta's light. She smiled and pulled him back to her. She could be in his arms forever. How many more years could she beg for him from her annoying friends? Fifty? Sixty? Maybe push her luck and ask for a century. Just a century with him and she would be silent for the rest of her existence. She wouldn't ask a thing of them anymore. She could give her dogs to Death, if they were so fond of them, and ask for some years for Ransom in return. He said she would like Harlan's house, that it was away from the city. Maybe she could go with him. The city could live without her for some decades, couldn't it? Certainly, there would be hurt people in the U.S. too and home remedies to make. Her father was a traveler; he left, and the world went on.

Ransom's hands were on her thighs, firm and insistent. Marta remembered that she was wearing just his shirt, and it seemed too much. Her hands went to the hem of her shirt to take it off, but Ransom stopped her.

"Que foi?" [2] She asked, not realizing that she had switched to Portuguese. He was breathless, and his eyes were glued to the end of his shirt, that was barely enough to cover her pubis now, all scrunched up after their make-out session.

"I can't believe I'm being the responsible one here." Ransom groaned.

"So don't be." She tried to get closer to him again, and he used his arms to push her by her shoulders to the mattress.

"Stop tempting me." He said between his teeth, looking at her very seriously. "I'm not very good at resisting my impulses, and I'm trying to say something important here."

Marta huffed, resigned, and crossed her arms on her chest.

"I'm listening."

"I think we pushed enough of our luck today. You… you are like… Look, the room isn't dark anymore because we kissed. Last time, you summoned dozens of butterflies and broke the sidewalks from the restaurant to that car. Look at the pot on the nightstand, there's a small ecosystem there now!" Marta turned her head and saw the bundle of weeds and small flowers cascading from the pot to the ground.

"So? One could argue that they were using some strong fertilizer. Humans believe anything."

"Marta, when I left to meet you earlier, these plants were made of plastic."

"Oh."

"We can't risk it anymore. Not in the middle of the city. I can't punch everyone that tries to capture you or burn you at a stake."

"Oh." Marta looked from the pot to him. She never had created life where there was none before. Curious, she uncrossed her arms and reached for the plants. Ransom released her shoulders when he was confident that she wasn't trying to have sex with him anymore. When her fingers touched the dandelions, their petals flew away, turned into her favorite yellow butterflies.

" _Marta!_ " Ransom jumped out of the bed and went to the windows of the room to open them. "Can you please stop with that for today?" The butterflies flew around him for a moment, before he shooed them out. She was looking mesmerized at her own hand. It was never like that even before Harlan.

"I'll try."

Marta looked at Ransom, who was closing the windows and the curtains again. Was it how her power should have progressed if she wasn't unknowingly mutilated for the past half-century?

Her grandmother was like that, but she didn't create things. With a single swing of her ax, a whole army would crumble during her youth. She was a destroyer of worlds. Her grandfather was the only man to ever touch her, and he could only get her pregnant after making her drunk with cauim [3]. She cut his throat in the morning and left to wage war with that burden inside her. Mother was the first thing Grandmother couldn't bring herself to kill. She was born amidst anger and pain in the middle of a battlefield, already a fully formed adult. Mother was against passions; she taught Marta everything she knew. And now… Ransom was more than her loot? Was he more than the stolen piece of herself that she felt in his arms? Or was Marta bigger and stronger than she knew? The pressure of the trapped rivers under the city roared in her ears. He asked her to stop, to hide, so she would.

"Come back to bed." She called. He was still at the window, looking suspiciously at her. "I'll be on my best behavior. I promise. See? If I promise, I can't go back anymore."

He walked slowly towards the bed, but, when Marta opened her arms to welcome him, he curled himself around her, with his arms hooked on her waist and his face buried on her chest. Marta lulled him to sleep, with hummed songs and cafuné [4], feeling the skin on her wrists heal and close with every breath that he drew. She slept in the early hours of the morning -- when the city was finally the closest to silent that it would ever be.

Marta woke up to the smell of coffee in the room. Ransom was sitting by the tiny counter in the opposite corner of the room, and, in front of him, there was a loaf of bread and several fruits besides the aforementioned coffee. Her stomach grumbled.

"Morning. You have a normal glow now. I think that it's safe to assume that people can ignore it or think that you are pregnant or something." Marta quickly untangled her thick straight hair using her fingers to comb it, and, when she went to braid it, she remembered that she had lost her hair tie at some point of the past night. Ransom furrowed his forehead for a moment and asked: "You aren't, right?"

"I'm not what?"

"Pregnant."

Marta stopped on her way to the bathroom and turned to him, incredulous.

"Ransom, you know how pregnancy works, right?"

"Actually, Marta, Ms. Freeman, my 7th-grade Biology teacher, did _not_ include in her explanation about reproductive systems a single line on magical pregnancies." Marta could feel her cheeks blushing with his sarcasm. "So, how _does_ it work for your kind?"

"I'm mixed. I don't know the details on how it works for my father's side, but I know that in my mother's family it is not that different from how it begins for humans. I have to be in my fertile period..."

"So you have PMS too?"

"Not every woman has PMS, Ran… That's besides the point. I have to be fertile, and there has to be, you know, sex." Now she was certain that she was glowing more strongly again, this time in tones of red like her embarrassment.

"Any type of sex?" He was mocking her, she was certain of it, with his sarcastic tone and a raised eyebrow. That knowledge didn't make her less anxious on the subject. She focused her stare on the orange he was peeling.

" _No_." She squeaked and ran into the bathroom before he could say anything else. Her dress was still on the bathroom floor, stained with her own blood. Marta splashed water on her face and put on the dress under his shirt. She wasn't going to be half-naked on the way to his car. When she left the bathroom, a couple of minutes later, Ransom was cutting the peeled orange in half.

"So, let's say that, I don't know, I wanted to eat you out later today... we wouldn't need to worry about magical babies, then."

As to make his point in torturing her, he started sucking at one half of the orange in his hands. The orange was incredibly ripe, and a gush of juice trickled down his hand and chin. Marta was frozen on spot, watching the scene with fascination. Her mouth was dry, and, when Ransom made visual contact with her, she licked her lips. He sucked and ate every bud on that orange, and, when he was done with it, he used his large tongue to lick his hand. The pressure inside Marta was almost unbearable when she pounced on him. She straddled his lap on the flimsy chair and batted his hand to the side to lick the droplets of juice on his throat and chin. Ransom embraced her and tugged her hair, forcing Marta to offer his mouth for him to ravish. Her hands ran to touch his abs under the shirt he was wearing. They were way too dressed for her taste. When she moved to get a better angle of his mouth, Marta felt his erection against her ass. She had just a second to enjoy the obscene sound that he made before a loud bang outside the hotel followed by a tremor startled them. When they got to the window, Marta saw that the asphalt had cracked down the street and a spring of water burst into the open air. He turned his head to look at her, very sternly:

"I'll just pack my things and I'm going to drive you home before you do anything else."

***

She didn't argue with him and ate the fruit and the bread that he had separated for her. Marta noticed that there was a brown paper bag with the logo of a small shop a few blocks away from the hotel, which was owned by a local farmers co-op. Everything he offered to her that morning had grown with love and respect, and it tasted like it. Ransom took his suitcase and everything that he owned inside that hotel room. In the lobby, Marta watched the news while he checked out. All over the downtown, plants had sprouted on the ground, trees had grown wildly, and the water fountains were out of control. Marta felt guilty, she had no agenda, no motive to make humans lives harder. Alice would love to know this, though. She was very much like their grandmother.

When his car was leaving the city, Marta decided to take the bandages off her wrists. The new skin was frail, and a few burns on the pattern of the handcuffs could still be seen here and there. Ransom eyed her from behind his sunglasses for a moment before looking back at the road again.

"I thought you said that this would take a while to heal."

"I don't know what to say. It should have." She raised her arms to inspect them under the sunlight. It should have taken at least a week. No one healed like that. Not her grandmother, not her mother. A blurry memory came to her head. Her father coming back to the cottage with refugees, covered in blood and smelling like ashes. Mother ran to him, and, when they kissed, the air smelled like passionfruit flowers and rain. Father's wounds disappeared under Marta's gaze. He was so tall. He kissed her and Alice on their foreheads before going back to the war.

"So you don't know everything." He provoked her, in an amused tone. His right hand left the wheel and gave a gentle squeeze on her knee.

"I clearly don't." She complained. "I had no idea that you would want to be my guest at home, Ransom. You won't like it."

"According to this map you drew me," He took the brown paper bag on which he scribbled the directions to her house from the car panel and waved it. "We will drive for about an hour, an hour and a half. And then there's a trail, you said?"

"Yes and no. It's not on the side of the road, and humans can't find the path without me. There's no trail. The trees open the path so I get home."

"Of fucking course the trees open the path for you." He said between his teeth. "This actually furthers my point. You haven't asked how I found you yesterday."

"You told me that I left a trail of grass on the sidewalk."

"That helped, but the thing that made me unable to go back to my room, get a full night of sleep, and forget about you and this whole story was that I could feel your pain."

"Quê?"

"Not literally feel it and I had no idea where you were injured, I just felt it in my bones that you were in danger and hurt, and this almost made me lose my mind. So, if you really want to play catch and release with me, you'll have to do something about it because I don't think that I can _actually_ leave, Marta."

"Play what?"

"Of all that I said, that's the part you choose to focus on. Cool, cool. Sometimes you're a delight. Catch and loose. Kiss me, summon all the insects in the world, sit on my lap, blow up some pipes, have sex, maybe get the magical child you wanted all this time, and then boot me back to the U.S. That's your plan, right?"

"I don't have a plan." She tried to defend herself, but that only made him laugh dryly again.

"Wow. I hadn't noticed." He said, bitter. Marta had no idea what he wanted to hear, so she got silent, looking at his profile. "Fine. You're holding all the cards here anyway. I'm just… Do you think that Harlan knew what he was doing when he suggested Linda put 'Ransom' as my middle name and convinced the whole family to call me like this?"

Marta just blinked at him, confused.

"Oh. Ransom. I hadn't thought about the noun. Hm, English is my, what, fifth language? Some things just fly over my head." But he wasn't paying attention to her. He almost lost the entrance to the auxiliary road, having to make a sharp turn that earned them an angry honk from the car coming behind them.

" _How did he know?_ " His knuckles were white on the driving wheel with the sheer strength of his grip. "He had three living children when I was born. Why me?"

"I don't know. I didn't establish any conditions that would steer him to this direction." Marta's heart was hurting with his frustration. Of course, he was unhappy with this turn in his life. "It will be alright, Ransom. I'll fix it, you will see." He didn't answer her. "Don't worry, soon you'll be..."

"Free. Yeah, I heard the first thousand times. You didn't answer me last night, don't think I didn't notice."

"What haven't I answered? You can ask again and I will."

"You really should be more careful with your promises." He looked at the road and checked the map. "Is this the rock that you wrote about?" Marta looked at what he was pointing at.

"Yes. You can stop the car here." She looked at him again, anxious; he was still angry. "Just let me out for a second, I'll try to make the way big enough for the car to drive us closer to the house."

Ransom did as she asked, and Marta got to the entrance of the woods, trying to convince the trees that it would be just that car and just that time. They weren't happy. But she pledged, begged, and insisted so much that they complied, and a space big enough for his SUV opened in front of her eyes. She went back to the car. Ransom was even more tense than before when he drove inside the forest.

"Did you know that, twenty-four hours ago, I didn't even believe in 'energies’? People would say that they had included someone in their thoughts and prayers, and I would laugh at their naivete. Now, look at me driving to fairyland. Harlan is probably finding this a blast from the afterlife. There's an afterlife, right?"

"Something like that. Death likes way too much to be mysterious. He thinks that's part of his charm, but I think he's just really conceited."

"You _know_ Death? Like _The Death_? And Death is a 'he'?" The shock in his voice was endearing.

"Mother was his friend before I was born. Grandmother was his godchild or something like that. He is a he, but he also sometimes gets bored and is a she and sometimes they're just a they."

"Super. Of course, Death is genderfluid."

"Ah, Ransom, this obsession with bodies and gender is just a very boring and new trait in humanity. I don't even bother to really follow the new explanations your kind creates to separate itself internally."

"Cool. Cool. Sure." He was in silence a while longer. "Maybe I should have paid more attention to the class I did in Cultural Anthropology when I was in college, but it was such an easy A and it was on Mondays in the morning, so I was hungover during the whole semester."

"What does anthropology have to do with our conversation? Stop the car here." He turned the engine off, looking suspiciously around.

"Marta, you'll have to spin a lot of gold if this car is ruined when I get back to it because you insisted that I parked in the middle of the rainforest."

"It won't."

"Still."

"If it's ruined, one of my friends will fix it for you for free before you return it."

The roots and the rocks got out of her way with every step she gave towards her house. Ransom followed her close, carrying his suitcase with one arm.

"Spinning gold for me is out of the question then?"

"That's not how it works."

"How does it work, then? What else do I have to give you to be entitled to get my wishes granted from you?"

Marta had met her match in stubbornness. Ransom was relentless.

"I'm not answering this question, and we are almost at my place. I need to warn you again: it's not luxurious, it's not modern. It has no phone signal and no electricity."

"Fuck. Does it have a bathroom, at least?"

"Yes. Iramaya's wife, Ruth, is an architect, and I let her remodel it in the 90s, and there are plumbing and a bathroom inside the house with a shower and a bathtub."

"Who's Iramaya?"

"My friend. I kind of raised her."

"So you _do_ have a child."

"She's 63, I met her when she was 12, and Harlan had left already. So the spellbinding was done."

"Is that why you don't want me?"

"Why do you keep saying that?"

But he didn't answer. They had arrived at the clearing in the woods, and Marta's house was just a few steps away, on the top of a very small hill. From her living room window, she could see the whole valley and the mountains around her during the sunrise. The old stone walls, that Ruth preserved the best as she could, were covered in ivy on all sides; the green was just interrupted by the big, arched windows that brought natural light to each room. Her roof was covered with a very respectful moss, that Ruth couldn't just understand how it didn't make the whole house moldy. But Marta was a friend of the fungi, and they wouldn't ruin her precious things. Her front porch, a very welcome addition made in resistant wood by Ruth and Maya, went from her glass doors in the living room to the glass doors in her bedroom. In the back of the house, there was her kitchen, the largest room in the house, which also functioned as a lab. There was an old door made of carved wood which Father gifted to Mother when he was courting her that opened to her backyard and vegetable garden. When Marta and Ransom got to the front porch, he had stains of sweat on his shirt, but the crease in his brow had disappeared.

"You keep telling me that you want to be free from me and that you want me to go, Marta." He was leaning on the rail, looking at the valley under them. Marta stood behind him, with her arms crossed on her chest and, once more, not knowing what to say to him. "I get it. I really do. Richard and Linda were never very interested in me either. I don't have much to offer, besides giving you your magic back. And, as much as I'm surprised with your house looking a lot better than I was imagining, I have no interest in being cooped up in the middle of nowhere forever."

She sat on the rail beside where he was leaning on, letting her back rest on a wooden column.

"How did you imagine my house?"

"Like one of the witches in the stories. Not made of candy, but definitely scary and full of cobwebs and a cauldron over your fireplace to cook me in it."

"Nah, human flesh tastes like crap." She waved her hand, playfully. When she was a little girl, her grandmother would sometimes roast hunters that she found in the woods. It was disgusting. "And I'm a tidy person, why would my house be in ruins?"

Ransom laughed and shook his head.

"You didn't disagree with the other things I've said."

"Changing the subject is an excellent technique for not lying." He stood up and got closer to her; Marta's heart started racing just from his heat.

"You don't think I deserve the truth, then?" Sitting on the rail, Marta was as tall as him. From that angle, she could see the details of the fine lines that were already forming on his face. In the 24 hours that they knew each other, Marta hadn't asked him his age. And she already couldn't deny him.

"Always."

"Why are you so eager to get rid of me?"

"What version of the truth do you want?"

"The brutal one."

"Whatever time we have together will be too little, too late."

"Ouch." He scrunched his face.

"And, as you stated, again and again, you don't like my life, and you're not interested in spending the little years you have with me here."

"You know that I'm 30, right?"

"I do. And that you're a playboy, interested in the fine things in life and the myriad of beautiful women you probably collect in your many travels. I'm neither."

"We can agree to disagree."

"About what?"

"About time spent with you not fitting under the category of the fine things in life, and you not being a beautiful woman in one of my many travels." He said this as a compliment, but Marta got angry.

"Thank you, but I'm not interested." She escaped from him and took her bags from the floor to put them inside the house.

In the living room, Death was sitting on Harlan's chair, petting Cloak and Dagger. That day, he was wearing a hideous Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts with flip flops. He saluted her with the caipirinha on his hand and a sly smile on his lips.

"Why are you here?"

"Dog sitting, why else? You're the most neglectful pet mom I've ever met, dear."

"Hey, why are you angry? It's not like you..." Ransom got in after her, carrying his suitcase. Death looked at him from head to toe.

" _Marta_..." Said Death, with lust and irony dripping from every syllable to use the name she went by those days. "Now I see why you forgot about your babies. My, oh my."

"Marta, who's this tacky hillbilly, and why is he in your living room?" Ransom turned to her, bothered.

"I'm pleased to meet my friend's betrothed and see that he is indeed a gentleman, unlike his grandpa. I'm Death, dear. But you can call me Benoit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] King Dom João VI and Queen Dona Carlota Joaquina came to Brazil in 1808 running away from a war with France. This means that Marta was born in 1809.  
> [2] "What happened?", but here it has the meaning of "What's wrong?"  
> [3] Native American fermented beverage. Its actual ancient recipe was lost in time, we only know that it used Wild Manioc (which is poisonous) and it was a hallucinogen.  
> [4] Cafuné: a mix of caress and massage on the scalp. It could be translated to "running the fingers through the hair", but I have been told by foreigners who experienced cafuné that what we Brazilians do is not exactly the same thing.
> 
> *screams* I put Benoit in this!!!!!!


	5. E, quando eu me apaixonei, não passou de ilusão

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Even if he stayed with me, you would keep knitting the fabric of reality..."  
> "He's a very good knitter. A while ago, he made me a beautiful hat with the separation of Pangea." Chimed in Benoit, very excited.  
> "You're not helping, lover. Proceed, star."  
> "And your husband would come to take him from me in a heartbeat."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is named after lines of Tom Jobim's [ "Ligia"](https://open.spotify.com/track/374rP3oqQf1Qld2H8pH5fv). They translate to "And, when I fell in love, it was but an illusion"
> 
> I need to state to everyone reading this that I'm a strong believer in the principle of "Chekhov's Gun" as is our lord and savior Rian Johnson

Ransom stopped in his stride. Death usually had this effect on humans when he chose to let them see him. Marta unconsciously tried to put herself between them. Benoit laughed, sipping on his straw.

"No need to worry, love. I'm not here to take anyone." Marta looked at him suspiciously as he continued speaking. "I mean, I don't always know, most of the time I'm just there when the passage occurs, but I don't think that… Unless you're planning to kill him. Are you?"

"No, _Benoit_. But I was meaning to have little chat with you and, perhaps, _her_ too." Marta answered him, annoyed. Benoit made a huge slurping sound with his straw.

"If you're talking about Time, he's a 'he' now."

"Cool, I need to have a little chat with you both."

"Lover, our godchild is calling!" Benoit raised his voice to the void. From the kitchen, Marta heard:

"You guys know that I have a lot of work to do, right?" Time walked into the room with one of Marta's scarves in his hands. It was pink and went great with his black skin, which was decorated with infinite golden tattoos. "Hey baby girl, is it urgent? I'm keeping this." He said in the same breath, already wrapping the scarf around his neck.

Ransom took Marta's arm and pressed her: "You said your grandmother was Death's godchild, not you." He was very pale and shaking. "Also, what the fuck? Time? They're together?"

"How is that a surprise?" Benoit asked, tapping his glass and making it replenish itself with more caipirinha. "Technically, she wasn't meant to be our godchild, but then she was just a maiden alone in here without any parents and any friends, and we are just two old softies."

"Hi Ransom, you can call me Elliott, but please just don't call me at all. _Marta,_ does he need to be a part of our chat?"

"I'd rather not." She answered. Ransom looked at her, furious.

"What the actual f…"

Elliot snapped his fingers and time stopped. Everything froze, suspended in the weird dimension of non-existence. He took a few steps forward in the living room and sat on the arm of Benoit's chair.

"So, tell us, my star, what's going on?" Benoit asked, passing his glass to Elliott. They were looking very attentively at Marta, with those two pairs of eyes older than history itself. Marta let out a loud breath and gestured to frozen Ransom, with his mouth opened mid-sentence.

"This. I really screwed up this time, and I need help to fix it."

"I don't see how you think that this situation is a screw-up, estrelinha." Elliott made a face when he took a sip of Benoit's drink and coughed, complaining: "Lover, this is way too strong."

Benoit caressed Elliott's face and smiled at him like they were newlyweds. Marta always felt envious of them.

"You know I like to feel alive, lover." Benoit answered, with a sly smile. Elliott laughed with Benoit's stupid joke, infatuated, before turning to look at Marta again.

"Please do elaborate, star. How can we help?" Benoit prodded, resting his head on Elliott's chest.

"This is not what I wanted! I want a baby! I want to be needed! He doesn't even _like_ me; he doesn't even want to be here!"

"Did you kidnap him, child?" Elliott had a frown on his face, very mother-hen-like as only he could be.

"No."

"Threatened to use your grammie's ax on him? To turn him into a beast? To take his luck and his looks forever?" He continued, under the vaguely amused stare of Benoit's curiously shaped face.

"No! I'm not like that, ok? I don't like when they're afraid." Marta turned her back on them so they wouldn't see her pout, crossing her arms like a child about to throw a tantrum.

"So one could say that he's here with you by his own will." Benoit stated, very carefully. "You even forgave his debt yesterday, didn't you?"

"How do you…?" Marta turned quickly on her heels, outraged.

"Star, you killed a man, you know I was there." She just hated whenever she gave Benoit reason to talk to her like she was a dumb child.

"Ah. Yeah, that makes sense."

"He's free already, he's here, what makes you believe that he doesn't like you?" Elliott proceeded to question her.

"Why would he?"

" _Baby star_ ," Elliott chastised her, "have you taken a good look at yourself? You're a fairy. Once upon a time, humans would worship you as a goddess. You _should_ be worshipped as a goddess. You shouldn't believe everything Bartira told you. She meant well, but your mother didn't always know best and she had her own interpretation of the truth. You're an adult now, you can make your own choices."

Marta chewed on her bottom lip, a horrible habit that Mother wasn't able to rid from her.

"So, you like this rude human, and he was promised to you. Why are you freaking out again?" Benoit was checking on his nails instead of looking at her.

"He's a _human_. Even if he wouldn't leave me in a month or two, which we know he will because here is not glamorous and I'm just a peasant..." Benoit and Elliott exchanged a knowing look at this point, which made Marta stop. "What do you guys know that I don't?"

"Well, when you have lived for a few billion years..."

"Not _a few_ , lover." Elliott pointed out.

"I didn't come here to be called old. As I was saying, when you're an ancient being, I think it's safe to say that: we know a lot of things that you don't."

"No, no, no. You don't fool me. What do you guys know _about me_ that I don't?" Another meaningful look. "See! That's what I'm talking about!"

"I would really rather not get on your parents' bad side..." Benoit muttered.

"They lost claim on the subject when he left me, and she decided to die when I wasn't even an adult."

"Well, she's dead, star. This means that I see her on a regular basis, and she can be very nagging when she wants to."

"If you really want to know, you should look for your father, and that's all we are going to say on the subject. We are _not_ meddling on your family matters. This never ends well. But we can discuss more about your annoying betrothed. You were on a very interesting paranoia spiral about how he will definitely leave you until the Summer, and, even if he doesn't…?"

Marta couldn't believe that they were behaving like that. No, scratch this. She shouldn't be surprised. They were just behaving like they usually did about everything. It's just that no subject ever felt so urgent.

"You will make me spell it out, for real?"

"Yes." Elliott answered, sheepishly.

"Even if he stayed with me, _you_ would keep knitting the fabric of reality..."

"He's a very good knitter. A while ago, he made me a beautiful hat with the separation of Pangea." Chimed in Benoit, very excited.

"You're not helping, lover. Proceed, star."

"And your husband would come to take him from me in a heartbeat."

"Well, that's usually how things go, baby star." Benoit seemed genuinely sad when saying this.

"So there's no hope for us?" Marta needed to look at Ransom's face when she asked this. "I've never wanted anything more in my whole life."

"And what is it that you want, my beloved child?" There was love in Elliott's voice. It wasn't just the Fae that had their favorites, and Marta was special to those gods. Even if, in their case, it usually meant that they would console her when doing their part in the dance of the universe.

"I want a child." She repeated, dreamily. "I want him to want a child with me. I even want to change to make him want to stay." Marta circled Ransom, without touching him, as if she was Pygmalion wishing Galatea into existence. "But there's no hope for us, so I want to sever this bond. I want my powers back, the ones that Harlan stole from me, and I don't want to see him ever again, so this doesn't hurt so much."

"The easiest ritual for what you're asking would be to kill and eat him in the Summer Solstice's Dawn. This year, we will even have a full moon." Marta turned her head so fast to look at Benoit that her dark brown hair whipped her face. "Ok, if you want to keep the human alive, you could also get pregnant at Solstice. It would probably work."

"Will I want him _less_ when I have his child inside me?"

Elliott licked his lips and looked at Benoit, almost embarrassed.

"Look, we aren't a good parameter. When one of us is pregnant, this one gets almost hungry." Said him, fidgeting with the scarf on his neck.

"Ew. Too much information." Marta scrunched her face and shook her head.

"Stop being such a child. Lusting for your spouse is perfectly normal and healthy, and even your holier-than-thou mother would agree with me."

" _Please don't bring my mother into this._ " She begged at Benoit, who just shrugged with a little chuckle.

"Marta, we can't promise you what you want to hear. You are bound to this human. He's as yours as you're his, as I explained to his grandfather thirty years ago..."

" _You_! I thought you didn't meddle!" Marta pointed a finger at Elliott, accusingly.

"I'm sorry for making sure your betrothed got to you like he was supposed to!" He stood up, very dramatically. "I have work to do, I won't stay here and be attacked. But listen to me, child, you two are connected. This was meant to be. It's your destiny, you're welcome to fight it as much as you want to. You are free to keep reneging yourself as Bartira taught you, for all I care. But, if you really want him, if you really want his child, you will need to learn to take risks. He is human. His kind is born without magic and perishes quickly. Do with it what you want, I'm not going to coddle you sugarcoating things. I expect to hear from you at our Solstice party. If you want to and he behaves himself, bring him along." With that, Elliott disappeared into thin air.

"...uck?!" Ransom finished his sentence as soon as the world went back into tune. He looked around, confused. "Where's the other one?"

"He left." Benoit answered, getting on his feet. "And I'm going too, I'm not interested in having marital problems due to this. _Marta,_ if you need more dog sitting or anything else before the Solstice, please call. And don't take _Elliot_ 's words too seriously, you know he is a drama queen." Benoit petted the dogs for a few moments, saying goodbye to them. Then he walked to Marta, gave a kiss on her cheek, and added, before vanishing too, in Latin, his favorite language: "Tu scis te amo, stella".

Marta stayed still, counting her heartbeats, for a while.

"I need to lay down." Ransom said, behind her. "It… it's a lot. A part of me keeps thinking that I've had a psychotic break or a stroke induced by the plane's depressurization, and this is just a really insane trip. I feel queasy."

He was pale as Marta could see when she turned to him. Having a baby would be the easiest way to make him really free to live his life, according to Benoit. He would have to stay for at least two months there with her for it to work, though, and there were no guarantees. She tried to shake those thoughts to the back of her head, at least for a while.

"Sure. There's a hammock on the porch and there's my bedroom. What do you prefer?"

" _Anything_." He pleaded, putting his suitcase on the floor and vacillating to stand properly again. Marta supported him, putting his arm across her shoulders, and they went back to the porch, where she had already enchanted the hammock to open itself for him. She summoned a pillow from her couch to make him cozier and put one of her hands on his forehead. It was clammy.

"You will sleep now and will wake up invigorated and calmer." She commanded. He laughed and opened his mouth to counter-argue, but her spell was already working; his whole body relaxed into a deep dreamless sleep. Marta couldn't resist giving him a quick kiss on his forehead before leaving to tidy the mess that they had left in the living room, with Cloak and Dagger on her heels as usual.

She changed to the denim overalls that Maya had gifted her on the 25th anniversary of their first meeting, and Marta kept enchanting it over and over again every time it got a new tear. She went to tend to her gardens. By the sun's position in the sky, it would be about 1 P.M. and, as the market happened yesterday, was a Saturday. Marta scolded some aphids trying to eat her herbs and the ants that were enabling them; negotiated with the weeds to leave her pumpkins alone; and explained to the apple trees that while they would not be friends with the guava one, everyone needed to get along in her lands. One of her monkey friends brought a bunch of acerolas[1] to her, nagging in her ear about Marta's habit of forgetting to eat when she was involved with her work.

***

It was late in the afternoon already, and Marta was coming back from her expedition on her hives, bringing to her house huge honeycombs that the queen bee insisted on gifting her with, and still surrounded by a cloud of very gossipy worker bees who were narrating the latest news on their eternal feud with the wasps from across the forest, when she saw Ransom. He was sitting on a low branch of her oldest blackberry tree with a basket full of fruit on his lap. He widened his eyes a little bit upon seeing Marta, and she remembered the bees and the fact that he was human and possibly allergic to them. The bees also noticed him and buzzed, excited, with how hot her new friend was and asked for her to tell them what he thought of their honey when he tasted it, before Marta shushed them and told them to go back to the forest.[2]

"So I'll have to add 'bee charmer' to your list of fantastic abilities." He said, with a joking tone in his voice. Marta felt herself blush and she took a handful of the berries on his lap to have something to do with her hands.

"Bees are huge sellouts. You just offer them a compliment or two about their honey, and you'll wake up with honeycombs all over your bed if you don't draw serious boundaries." She answered, popping some fruits in her mouth. "You should be more amazed by my ability to calm apple trees, they are really demanding." Ransom chuckled and leaned in towards Marta's personal space to take a twig that was in the middle of her hair.

"I'll keep that knowledge in mind and try to never cross an apple tree." His gaze on her face was making her feel very self-conscious, thinking about the tracks of mud that she had all over her clothes and hands, and the fact that she probably smelled like sweat.

"I'm serious." She complained.

"I know." Ransom answered her with a soft smile and leaned in closer. After her talk with her godparents, Marta was really anxious to be around Ransom, as if he could guess somehow what she was planning. Well, he kind of already did, earlier that day when he talked about her wanting to get pregnant and then send him away. She took a step back, she wasn't ready for this conversation now.

"I… I'll put all of this away and then I'll take a bath. I'm glad to see that you're feeling better." She was walking backwards towards the house, and he kept looking at her, almost sad. "There's a door beside the fireplace. Not the one that leads to the bathroom, the other one. That's a room that took me a while to just get it right, but it's a, hm, how would you call it?" She almost tripped on her own feet, and the orange tree reached to help her, like a dork. "Multidimensional space. It's a library, a music and art studio, and an empty room because I really can't decide what to do with it." It was a nursery when Harlan left. Then it became Iramaya's room, long ago, when she lived there. Now it was a physical representation of the void in Marta's life. "You just think which of the three you want at the moment, and you'll have it."

"Obviously." He teased, with that half-smile that wouldn't go away. Marta laughed, in a strangled way, and realized that she had her back against the kitchen door.

"If, if you get bored being outside, it's all yours. You can go almost anywhere you want in the house. And please don't eat or drink anything from the unlabeled glass jars, I don't want to have to morph you into a human again."

"No worries. I'm not interested in becoming a toad." She was fumbling with the door handle, trying to balance her jars of honeycombs on the other hand, without turning her back to him. "Wait. Marta, you said 'almost anywhere,’ where I'm not allowed in?"

"Oh, ah. Yeah. Don't go in the basement. There's way too much dust and some tricky stuff. The trapdoor has a padlock on it anyway, to avoid nosy monkeys and such, but I think it's good to say things out loud."

"Sure, no basement. But the library is cool, right, Bluebeard?"

The kitchen door chose to collaborate with Marta at exactly that moment, and she got in almost stumbling.

"You have a very distorted vision of me, Ransom." She snorted. "But, yeah, everywhere but the basement is ok."

She went to clean herself a little bit in the kitchen sink, before starting to work on a potion. The sink was large and deep, made carved from one huge piece of soapstone, and its faucet had been delicately sculpted in brass. Ruth added this during the remodeling. She had connected the sink to the groundwater that ran under the cottage, and the drain, like every other in the house, went to the sprinklers in Marta's garden. She magicked it to not need artificial electricity to work as pretty much everything else there. A huge island made in the same dark-grey stone as the sink worked as her counter and the table where she made all of her meals - when she remembered to actually cook food. Ruth also insisted on making Marta have a modern biogas oven - which used the methane from the composting bin that she built for her. She went on and on about safety and how, if she was worried about polluting, her lighting up the ancient fireplace to cook anything was more harmful to the environment than some kitchen appliances. Marta caved in, eventually. Ruth couldn't understand that the fireplace held magic in itself, not really, so Marta used it to brew potions and the oven to make regular food when she was in the mood. All of her pans, pots, and cauldrons were made of copper and brass. There wasn't a single piece of iron in that house, not even a nail on the walls. This was a bitch to comply with during the renovations, but Ruth understood that it was a serious matter to Marta and was very creative in the process. To thank her, Marta gave her an amulet that served to protect her and to help people respect her. Ruth was tiny and her skin was so dark that it had blue-ish undertones; humans used to associate these traits with incompetence. She didn't want Marta to _give_ her the certainty of a successful career; she wanted to try her luck with her merit. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

She was powdering some roots in her mortar when Ransom got in the kitchen with a book under in his hands and a stunned look on his face:

"Is this a _first copy_ of 'Frankenstein'?" Marta raised her eyes to the book, seeing the leatherbound cover and the gold lettering that she added to make it more resistant.

"Yes. The poet who gave it to me swore that Mary was a fascinating person, besides the amazing writer we know that she was. He bought it as soon as it was published, you can see that, in the actual book, there's not even her name in it. I added to the cover that I made, because she deserves her credit. Anyway, as I was saying, he bought it without knowing that it was written by a woman. Then, when he found out, he made a point to get her autograph in it."

"Why do you have it?" He asked in a brisk tone, sitting on one of the chairs by the island, on the opposite side of where Marta was working.

"Ah, you know." She got some sage twigs from the bundle hanging in the ceiling and threw it in the mortar.

"I don't, actually."

"It's a fae thing. When you're courting, you give rare and flashy gifts to show your interest. My father built this cottage for my mother after she laughed at one of his jokes." Ransom made a weird noise with his nose, it seemed that he was showing contempt, but why?

"So you were being _courted_."

"Yes. I was of age, my mother knew that he was my father's friend from a while ago, and, even though that he liked to be called A Poet, he seemed like a good match."

"And she was wrong."

"I mean, yeah. You could say so. Here I am, a spinster. My sister and I are the last of my mother's lineage, and, knowing Alice's temper, we will probably remain like that." She mixed the fine powder in the mortar with some flowers that she had, turning it into a paste that would have to go into the fire for a few hours.

"What are you working on?" Ransom changed the subject.

"It's for you." She raised her head to meet his eyes, fighting her shyness, aware that she was already blushing. "It's a contraceptive."

He held her gaze, defiant.

"And were you planning on telling me what you decided in your little chat with your… godparents at some point or you're just going to treat me like your obedient dogs?" Marta had sent Cloak and Dagger away when Ransom was sleeping, because they kept growling at him and trying to bark. They hadn't returned so far. Marta put the mortar and its bowl to the side and leaned on the counter, supporting herself on her elbows. She could feel the sweat starting to evaporate on her scalp and body, leaving behind just the cooling sensation of its memory on her.

"Fine. Do you want to talk terms seriously? Let's talk terms seriously."

"I wanna talk terms, I can't promise to be completely serious." Ransom raised one eyebrow to her and gave a sly smile.

"Read the room once in a while, Ransom. Your rudeness is not as cute as you think it is." His expression changed to something almost hurt, but he controlled himself quickly and assumed a neutral face. "I'm really not keen on being one of your many conquests, but, as you said yesterday, since we are here, let's enjoy ourselves. You're my guest. As long as you want to stay, you can consider this house as if it were yours. When you want to leave, the woods will guide you to your car." Marta wanted to keep the tone as businesslike as she could.

"And about your trapped magic and the bond? Weren't you able to figure it out yet?" He asked in an earnest tone.

"I won't do the thing that will solve things for sure. And the second option is not simple either, and I don't know if I really want it."

But, of course, he couldn't just accept her word for it and leave things as they were.

"Care to enlighten me on what are both of the options? It's my life too."

"I get stronger during the Summer Solstice. Option A: I kill you that night and eat you like you were afraid I would."

"Ok, I don't like it either." He was laughing, but his eyes had a nervous twinkle. She thought it would probably be really weird to be around someone that could turn you into a meal at any time and chose not to. "And option B?"

"Option B: you get me pregnant during the Solstice. And that's why I'm making you a contraceptive potion." Marta, somehow, was able to take all emotion from her voice when saying this.

"Wow. Ok. Literal magical babies." He looked at her in a funny way. "I think I'll take your magical version of the pill, yeah, thank you. What are the side effects again?"

"Tell me if you notice changes in your appetite and/or if you get drowsy, but it shouldn't happen. You have to take it once a week for it to keep its effect."

"Cool."

She went under the counter to get her small copper cauldron from the cabinets. When she was rummaging through her mess, Ransom said, very close to her:

"I don't know if I would make a good father. Much less of magical children." There it was again, that smile that was almost sad. Marta got up, using the cauldron as a shield in front of her.

"I would never force you into taking part in it. We would be all right." This didn't help either, and Ransom's face contorted for a small moment before he broke eye contact with her.

"Sure, yeah. That's very presumptuous of me, right? You're a catch and loose type of girl. At least my gift would be more useful than a rare book."

Marta took the mortar and the cauldron with her to the living room, already lightening up the fireplace.

"Don't be dramatic, Ransom. Bill kissed me _once_ and it was with a closed mouth. You're the one who put me in a historical series of women from all around the world." When she was scraping the contents of the mortar to the cauldron and summoned some water from her fountain behind the house, Ransom passed by her and opened the multiple room's door. He came back without the book and leaned on the threshold, with his arms crossed at his chest.

"Yes, Marta, I have dated dozens of fairies to whom I was promised before being born in the past fifteen years, this is all very common to me."

She looked at him and was relieved to see that he had that trickster smile back on his face. It was such a waste that he was human…

"I may not be human, but I'm still a woman. I have my pride." She waved her wooden spoon at him, half playful, half threatening.

"Clearly."

They were in silence while Marta carefully stirred the mixture inside the cauldron. After about fifteen minutes, it was getting to a light shade of purple and bubbling softly.

"This won't need my attention for about three to four hours, it's not an exact science. I still have to bathe." She held the spoon with maybe a little more strength than needed to keep herself from shaking and didn't look at him. "Do you want to go with me to the river?"

"Sure. I don't have a towel."

"Don't worry, there's one for you and one for me on the couch and a couple of kimonos too. I think that the black one with red carps will fit you just fine." Ransom laughed all the way to the couch. Marta turned to look at him.

"You are a show-off, did you know that?" The sun was getting lower now and its light was changing from the bright yellow to softer shades of orange when crossing the living room doors and windows. Ransom's skin had pretty colors under it, which made Marta remember the sculptures in pinkish marble that Ruth had shown her at hers and Maya's place. She liked his bright smile that appeared on his face now that she could just do magic without any fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] [ Acerolas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpighia_emarginata)  
> [2] Fun fact: researchers have found out that bees have intricate conversations with each other through the pattern of their flights. This whole part about Marta's orchard and vegetable garden is pretty much lots of nerdiness of my part extrapolating scientific knowledge with fantasy.
> 
> I added way more talk of anthropophagy (human eating) to this than I ever thought I would. Hannibal would be proud.


	6. Deixa eu bagunçar você

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me what you want." His voice was hoarse.  
> "Kiss me." Marta wasn't sure if this was a plea or a command but Ransom did as she spoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song ["Zero" by Liniker e os Caramelows](https://open.spotify.com/track/7Jl757vT5eNqemc6PtY2dA)  
> Line translation: "Let me mess you up"
> 
> This chapter is NSFW. It contains a very explicit sex scene.  
> Content warning: vague mentions of torture but I don't get into the specifics of it

Even though Ransom had seen her naked already while he was bathing her, Marta went into her room to change, and he used the bathroom for this end. Her body felt warm when she thought about swimming with him. They would have to be responsible, yet. She remembered the peeled orange in the hotel room, and a shiver ran through her body. Marta fastened the belt on her kimono made with the most delicate silk in a beautiful shade of leaf-green - white camellias bloomed all over it, being kissed by small hummingbirds knitted in blue and yellow - and left her room. In a small bag made of braided jute, she put the shampoo bar that she made and the vial with the hair conditioning cream made with aloe and royal jelly, among other things. She was smelling one of her bars of soap and wondering if he would like it; it wasn't really similar to his perfume. Maybe she could make some special ones for him later, using cardamom, cinnamon, and star anise. Ransom smelled like the justification that the Portuguese and the Spanish gave to the colonial enterprise.

"Are you ready to go, fairy?" His voice came way closer than she was prepared. He was standing behind her, his breath touched her face when he spoke. He could touch her, if he wanted to, but he didn't.

It was no surprise that the kimono fitted perfectly to his body, since Marta enchanted it to do so. Its hem covered his knees, but his calves were exposed. She was expecting a paler shade of white on his legs, but they were toned and high, with almost the same color of his arms.

"You're a runner." She blurted out before she could think better. As expected, this got her one of his cocky smiles, like the vain hedonist that he was.

"Sometimes. I like sailing better and, also, riding bikes once in a while."

"Ah." Marta wasn't sure if the certainty that he was also looking at her figure with desire made her more or less anxious.

"Your wrists are completely healed." He reached to touch them but stopped mid-air, as if he was forbidden. Marta looked at it again. Ugly and pink matching scars adorned them now. She would try some remedies to scrub off them later, when the skin was stronger.

"Yes. Yes, they are. I think that being here and… around you did something to my healing capacities. I'm not complaining, just really surprised."

"I'm glad to be of use. So, can we go now?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea. We have about an hour until the twilight, so I'll take you to the closest river this time. It's not as impressive as my favorite - don't repeat this when we are there." They left the house, and Marta was babbling. Ransom had put on flip flops; Marta didn't really wear shoes when she was home.

"Rivers are sensitive too?"

"You laugh, but they will drown you if you offend their beauty, and there won't be much that I can do."

"Cool. Every river is the most beautiful I've ever seen in my life, noted." He would always sound slightly ironic, and that vexed Marta a little. They crossed her vegetable garden and orchard and then entered the woods. The trees were on their best behavior that day and took roots and branches out of their way, even if they couldn't control their reaction to Ransom really well. "Am I really going insane or is there someone whispering and giggling near us?" He turned his head around, looking for the source of the sound. Marta looked at him over her shoulder, as she was guiding him:

"You can hear them?"

"Them…?"

"The forest."

"Uh, I guess. I can't understand their words, though." _Blessed be_ , Marta thought. "Can you translate them for me?"

"Part of them are threatening you and part of them are boosting your ego." She answered, crouching on the floor to jump to a lower level in the forest. Ransom jumped after her.

"Threatening me? I'm the captive here!" He exclaimed, dramatic. Marta rolled his eyes at him.

"There's literally nothing keeping you here, Ransom."

"So you say." He retorted, in a conspiratorial tone. "And the ones that are boosting my ego?"

"I'm not going to indulge in your obsession with your looks." Ransom laughed with her answer.

She was glad that he was behind her, because just _thinking_ about the things that the trees were saying made her blush. They were giving very explicit - and somewhat anatomically incorrect, as far as Marta understood - sexual suggestions of things to do with him. Ten steps ahead was the river. It wasn't very large nor deep; but its waters were clear and calm, and the rocks at the bottom weren't sharp. Marta stood still at the small gravel beach, allowing herself to relax a little while being welcomed by her old friend. Ransom's steps stopped too, still a few steps behind her. Marta decided that she would pretend that this was normal, that he was Bia. He had seen her naked already, hadn't he? She loosened her belt and let the kimono fall on the floor, walking towards the water without looking back. She swam a little and placed the bag on a taller rock in the middle of the river. Then she dived in, feeling her hair get loose from the knot she was wearing all day while working. When she stood up and got to the surface again, with the water just below her breasts, she saw Ransom. He was still on the margin, still clothed. She wondered why, but then she understood: he undressed very deliberately for her. He had way less body hair than she was expecting, and it was mostly golden. Marta didn't have much body hair either; and they were very fine, but very dark.

Ransom walked slowly towards her, and the smile on his face was almost predatory. Marta was frozen in place, like a wild animal under headlights. She could feel the water passing by every small piece of her body and the droplets that dripped from her face and breasts, but she couldn't move under his stare. Her gaze traveled from his chest to his arms, then to his stomach, and then, she couldn't delay it anymore, she looked directly at his penis. Under a bush of dark golden hairs, it got harder and bigger under her stare. Her breath got quicker, she had never wanted a man like that before. Marta could feel her face on fire, and, when she looked back at his face, she saw the same hunger that she felt; her mouth watered so much that she had to swallow it. His eyes followed the line of her throat, and his smile faltered, as if he, too, could be anxious. The water got to the level of his hips, hiding his erection from her unrelenting stare, and there he was, close enough to kiss her but not touching her once again.

"Tell me what you want." His voice was hoarse when he spoke.

"Kiss me." Marta wasn't sure if this was a plea or a command, but Ransom did as she spoke. He enveloped her by her waist with one arm and the other went to the back of her neck, pulling her to him at once. She could feel his whole body pressed against hers, while his mouth demanded that she opened hers. There was nothing restrained or delicate about this kiss. Ransom's tongue penetrated deep into Marta's mouth, while his erection poked against her belly, constrained between their bodies. Marta's hands went to his back, embracing him eagerly. She could feel the flowers blooming and the butterflies flying all around them, and, this time, it was just perfect and as things were supposed to be. When he bit her bottom lip and started kissing her jaw, she let her hands wander through his muscles, and she didn't even try to resist the impulse to grab a handful of his ass. She meant to do it ever since she saw him walking in front of her, guiding her to his car after the street market. He moaned into her neck, and his cock twitched a little against her. Marta couldn't stop the smug smile that formed on her lips and the chuckle that escaped from her. Ransom bit her in revenge, and it was her turn to exhale a sound that was half sigh, half moan.

"You'll be the death of me." His voice rumbled against her chest, and he kissed and nipped at her neck and clavicles even more. Marta clung her nails into his back with one hand and kneaded on his cheek with the other. She was moaning with almost every breath. "Oh, Marta, who would guess that you're a loud one?" His hand on her neck went to wrap itself into her hair, forcing her to arch her neck more. He licked a stripe from her clavicle to her mouth and kissed her again. Marta took a few steps back and pulled him with her until she was sandwiched between him and the rock where she had put their things. The water level was higher there, covering Marta's shoulders. Ransom let go of her for a moment, just to put both of his hands behind her ears, holding her jaw up to him. "Look at me." He commanded, and she did. His blue-green eyes seemed to want to know every single secret that she had, when looking deep into hers. "Tell me what you want."

Her heart was beating as fast as a fanfare, and she couldn't find her words for a moment. She tried to kiss him again, but he held her in place, even though his pupils were dilated and his cock pulsed against her, demanding.

"I want what you said in the hotel room."

"And what was it that I said?" Now there was the cockiness again, the hungry smile.

"Eat me out." Without waiting any further, Ransom raised her by her waist and sat her on the rock behind her. His face was directly at the height of her cunt. Thankful for the soft moss that covered the whole surface of that rock, Marta propped herself on the heels of her hands, and, tilting her head to the side, she spread her legs for him. He stopped for a moment, like she was his first woman. Marta ran one of her hands through his scalp, massaging it and pulling him closer to her. This broke his spell, and he smiled again and, with a cocked eyebrow, he teased her:

"Eager, aren't we?" Marta didn't answer, just nudged him closer to her again. He put her legs over his shoulders and angled her hips just a little bit better. "You're gushing, dear." He kissed her belly button obscenely, prodding his tongue inside it and sucking the skin on her stomach. Marta couldn't stop watching, and that's when she realized that she was glowing again. Ransom chuckled against her belly and moved to one of the bones of her hip, kissing and biting her there. Marta was panting and gasping. When he decided that he was finished marking her there, he lowered his face even more and buried his nose on her curls, inhaling deeply. "You smell so good, my fairy."

"Ransom..." She complained. He raised his head, almost as if he was innocent.

"Yes, dear?"

"Eat me out." She repeated, impatient. He peppered several kisses on her stomach but didn't come closer to her cunt again. "Are you going to make me beg?"

"Maybe..."

"I want so much to hate you." She groaned.

"I know, sweetheart. You still haven't properly asked me what you want." He was looking into her eyes again, and she shivered.

"Ransom," Marta took a deep breath and let out, between her teeth: " _please,_ eat my cunt."

"Your wish is my command." He lowered his head to her cunt, and this time he was so very eager that Marta screamed when, after licking a stripe on her lips to separate them, he found her clit and latched on it. Both of her hands went to his head, making a mess of his hair while she made a mess of his face, riding him hard. It didn't take her long to orgasm after he combined the expert pressure from his lips with quick and precise licks of his tongue. Marta moaned and cried incoherent words in every language that she ever spoke, and Ransom didn't stop. He flattened his tongue and licked her cunt like she was the honey of the gods; his hands on her hips kept her in place with an iron grip that, Marta hoped, would leave marks on her skin. He kissed and sucked her lips, not bothering with her hairs, and prodded his tongue on her vaginal opening. He correctly interpreted Marta's surprised "oh" on the new sensation as an incentive to keep going and started alternating broad stripes on her with little moments of attention to her clit again in addition to using his tongue to brush over her entrance and penetrate her ever so slightly.

"Please, Ransom, finger me." This time she didn't care about her pride, and he didn't laugh. His right hand let go from her hip, and he turned all of his attention to her clit again with his mouth while his fingers very carefully caressed her. His middle finger pressed against the opening just a little, and Marta hissed at the sensation, unfamiliar to her for the last fifty years. He just let it there, with only the first phalange in, and doubled his care with his mouth. Soon, Marta was clamping on his finger and moaning again, and he pushed a little further, not meeting as much resistance as before. It burned; she had forgotten about it. She didn't masturbate often, and, when she did, she would mainly focus on rubbing her clit with oil-coated fingers. But it wasn't a bad burn, not when Ransom was so careful and dedicated about it. He started sliding his finger in and out of her very slowly, not matching the quicker pace of his tongue on her clit. Marta let a small cry escape, and she realized that she was asking him to fuck her but speaking to him in a mix of the ancient dialects that her family would speak at home. He got the general idea and buried the finger inside her, crooking it to rub relentlessly at her g-spot. Marta howled and started riding him again, clamping around his finger. One of her hands left his head to massage her own breast and pinch her nipple. With a particularly intense combination of his ministrations, Marta lost it. All the noises from the world disappeared, and she couldn't see for a moment, her entire body shaking violently with the wave of orgasms that hit her one after the other. Ransom was the only thing grounding her to this world; she could have flown like a kite, lost forever in the twilight sky, if he wasn't there with her.

Her body collapsed over his head, boneless, and he carefully removed himself from her cunt to help her lower herself to the water again. It was almost night already, and she should have felt cold, but the water was warm all around them. Ransom just embraced her under the water within his arms, like he had carried the night before, as if she was precious. Marta put her arms around his neck, loosely embracing him back. She could see her glow; this time it was closer to the blue of bioluminescent algae. It glowed all around them, and Ransom was smiling at her while his hands idly caressed her skin. Marta felt her heartbeat go back to normal, and she started to caress his nape with the tip of her fingers. This made him take in a sharp breath.

"Marta, please, have mercy on me." He softly whispered against her head. She stopped immediately with her touches, worried.

"Why? You don't like it?"

"It's precisely the opposite issue." He chuckled. Marta frowned and straightened her back to look at his face:

"What are you talking about?"

"There's no rush, Marta." He gave a gentle kiss on her cheek. "You don't need to feel pressured into doing anything here. We can go on your rhythm."

"What?" She jumped from his arms, turning to get her shampoo from the rock and starting to angrily scrub her scalp. "You think that I'm a 200-year-old virgin?"

It was Ransom's time to look confused.

"You are… not?"

" _No_ , Ransom." Marta pushed the shampoo into his hands and dived to remove the suds from her hair. "I'm very much _not_ a virgin."

"You told me that, when Bill courted you, he only kissed you once and with the lips closed." For some reason, his tone was almost accusatory, while he scrubbed himself.

"I didn't have sex with _Bill_ , Ransom, for fucks sake." It took her a serious effort to not abuse her hair while conditioning it. She was angry; her glow was getting red, because, of course, yes, now she was a fucking mood ring and there was no way to control it. He rinsed his hair and reached over her to get the soap.

"Who, then?"

"Why should I share my sexual history with you? What the fuck is this? Who was _your_ first, if you really think we should..."

"Jenny Wilkins, freshman year in college. I was still skinny, and she wore braces. We dated for a couple of months after this." He gave her the soap and, without missing a beat, added: "Who, Marta?"

"What difference does it make?"

"Do you want to know my whole sexual history to tell me this? I can tell you. Do you want me to begin with the end with Clarice I-Don't-Know-Her-Last-Name from three weeks ago or to tell you about how women decided that I was interesting during my first summer vac..."

"Shut up!" She screamed, slapping her hands on the water. A shock wave hit the trees around them, and Ransom stood up in front of her, angry and breathing heavily. "I didn't even wanna know about Jenny or Clarice or any other women that you've ever held in your arms after they came all over your face! _I_ don't want to tell you, because I didn't want to know! And now you opened this and… Ugh! I want so much to hate you!" With this, Marta dived and started swimming back to the margin; the water splashing around her couldn't stop the thunder inside her.

"But _I_ want to know about the other men who taught you how to kiss and all the other things that you did!" He slapped the water again and started to walk towards her.

"There's no other men!" Her voice was almost shrill then. She grabbed her kimono from the floor and dressed herself without even looking anymore at him. "You want to know? _Fine!_ Her name was Beatriz, and she was only nineteen when she thought it was a _great idea_ to bear arms against the fucking military regimen, and, obviously, she got arrested and tortured for months." She could hear his steps on the gravel. "She was nearby, locked up at something that the humans called the Casa da Morte, the House of Death [1]. If you got in, you didn't get out. But she did. Somehow, this brave and stupid warrior of mine ran and took a jeep and drove without having almost any feeling on her legs until getting on that rock that you've seen. I was near the road with Iramaya, who was just _a child_ , and the soldiers were shooting like this was a western movie. _They_ were the rats I mentioned to you." She turned to look at Ransom; she wanted him to see her. It was pointless; she was so angry and so sad that she couldn't even understand the emotions on his face. "I saved her. I nursed her back to health. I forgot what my mother always told me. I forgot that people always _leave_. And I made her my lover." Lover. Saying that word made tears threaten to come out. Fuck, what was it with Ransom that kept making her cry so much? He tried to get closer to her, still naked, and Marta took a step back. "See, Ransom, I don't have a long string of lovers. I had one. One that I loved deeply, and that I wanted to stay with her forever. I even fought with Benoit and Elliott for her, and they ignored my pleas."

"What happened?" He asked, very carefully, very low.

"What do you think that happened?" Marta laughed, bitter. "She got tired of this. Got tired of _me_. The fucking revolution was more important. She left."

"Is she…?"

"No, she's not dead. I gave her an amulet of protection, I don't think that she took it off. She's a senator, now, and a grandmother. She never looked back."

"And what did you ask of her? Did she steal you too, like Harlan?"

"No." Marta shook her head. "She didn't ask a thing of me. She stayed; she worked on the orchard with me. She beared living at that house before the renovations with me and with a girl that she wasn't old enough to parent, but she tried even so. _I_ asked one thing of her, and she did it."

They stayed in silence for a moment. Ransom took the kimono from the floor and dressed himself. Now that she wasn't so angry anymore, just hurt, she could see that he didn't remember to take her bag. She summoned it and started walking back to the house.

"We need to start working on the dinner, and I need to check up on your medicine, even though it's not ready yet." He walked a few steps behind her. Thankfully, she was still glowing, closer to pink now, which illuminated the path for them. "I can hear you thinking. Ask, Ransom. You invaded so much of my privacy already, what is it to ask one more thing that you're not entitled to know?"

But he didn't ask. She could only hear his breathing and his steps. The forest was silent now, mindful of Marta's rage.

" _Now_ you're being coy? Ok. I'll make the conversation alone." She did a lower voice, mimicking his: "What did you ask of her, Marta? I have the right to claim eeeeeverything that I want!" He was still not saying anything. "Oh, Ransom, sure, let me tell you the deepest darkest secrets of my soul. Come on, let's share our worst feelings. The only thing that I've asked of the only person that I mistakenly thought I belonged to was: please, love, stay alive. That's it. Because I'm what? Exactly, _an idiot_."

When they got to the path on the hill that gave access to her house, Marta stopped and turned to him, with her arms crossed at her chest:

"You wanted me to say please. I want you to say sorry."

He raised his eyes from the ground to look at her, and his expression was a mix of shame and anger.

"Come again?" Was the only thing that he said.

"I don't know if you're used to being held accountable by the people in your life when you fuck up, but I expect you to apologize to me. Not just look chastised and such. You had no right. I told you I didn't want to talk about it, and you pressured me into remembering something that makes me sad. I need to hear you say that you're sorry and that you won't do it again."

Ransom ran his hand over his hair and looked incredulous.

"Marta, you can't tell me what to do. I'm not your dog."

At that moment, she could only feel contempt for him.

"Clearly not. My dogs are not selfish pricks." And she turned her back to him, climbing the hill again. "You can help yourself to something to eat at the kitchen, and, when you decide to behave like a decent person, you're welcome in the bedroom, not a minute prior to it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] I wish I had made this up, but the Casa da Morte was a real place in Petropólis (one of the cities nearby Teresópolis and the general area where this story is happening). I don't have words to talk more about it, besides telling you that most people *didn't* got out, Beatriz's escape is more fantastic than every single ouce of magic that Marta does in here.  
> Beatriz was inspired by my step-grandmother and also by our ex-president Dilma Rousseff (not the "in love with a fairy" part but BAMF warriors who survived and influenced Brazilian politics)  
> If you want to find out more about the consequences of the military regimen and this specific real place of horrors, go here: https:// www. bbc. com/ news/world-latin-america-32492026
> 
> And to think that I began writing this thinking that I was going to be able to make it without any porn and almost no angst hahahahha  
> Sweet summer child...
> 
> A personal note that no one cares about: I spent my childhood deep in the countryside of Brasil and the Atlantic Forest. We had electricity once in a while, no neighbors, no phone, no other children besides my sibling. This meant that the trees and the rivers were my friends. My parents are very... pagan and my father was the one to teach me to always say hello to the ocean and the rivers before going in, letting them know that you've arrived and to thank them for their water. It's as Gabriel García Márquez explained about Magical Realism: we are just extrapolating our Latin American realities, I didn't really make much up.


	7. Na bruma leve das paixões que vêm de dentro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Where are you?" He asked, his hands finding the path to her belly under her sweatshirt. "You left me for a moment." Marta sighed and let her head fall on Ransom's chest, feeling herself get warm with his touch.  
> "I was here." She whispered.  
> "Liar."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song: ["Anunciação"](https://open.spotify.com/track/661Ns9G25zHdih4qVshBO7) ("Signalling"/"Announcements")  
> Author: Alceu Valença  
> Line: "With the light mist of the passions that come from inside us"

Upon entering the house through the kitchen door, she took a pair of clean cloths and soaked them in water. Marta took one for herself and practically threw the other at Ransom, while she sat on one of her kitchen chairs to clean her feet. He did the same, looking at her the whole time. She had no idea what he was thinking, and she wasn't interested in finding out. Marta went quickly to the living room to check on the cauldron bubbling in the fireplace. As she had imagined, the potion for him wasn't done yet. She went back to the kitchen, and Ransom was still there, just sitting.

Marta cleared the island partially, opening a space for them to eat. She wasn't going to cook for him, but she also didn't want him to starve. She took a basket, a loaf of bread, and some preserves out from her cabinets and set the table. They ate in silence.

Marta went to her music room, because she wasn't going to spend her night under Ransom's stare. She didn't want to look at his face and think about Jenny, Clarice, and all the women in between. She didn't want to think about Bia nor how she was knowingly walking into a trap of her own making again. Fuck Benoit, fuck Elliott, Mother _was_ right. Mother did know best. She shouldn't be involved with humans. She set the music sheets by the piano and cello and let them play while she sulked on her armchair, thinking again about turning him into something. A rabbit. A snake. Oh, a dog. Marta chuckled alone. It would serve him well to spend a decade having Cloak and Dagger as his companions. As if coming to her call, Marta heard the boys barking and snarling at Ransom in the general vicinity of her porch.

"Marta!" He called "Marta, control your dogs!"

Marta laughed to herself for a moment before coming to his rescue.

" _Marta!_ " His voice was high-pitched when she opened the glass doors that connected the porch to the living room. He was sandwiched between the house's outer wall and her adorable guard dogs, and seeing this made Marta unable to hide her smug smile.

" _Kinder_." Under Marta's firm command, both dogs whined and went towards her, liking her hands and demanding pats. She took two sausages from the pocket of her kimono and fed them, seeing their tails wagging happily with the treats. She got to her knees and scratched their ears while they lovingly licked her. Normally, Marta would speak to Cloak and Dagger in the same language her father spoke to her as a girl, but she decided to switch to English just so Ransom could understand: "Don't embarrass me, my loves. Here, we are polite to our guests." Cloak whined a little and raised one of his paws to Marta's shoulder. "No, no, no. You don't have to like the bad human, but you have to let him be." Dagger howled a little, looking at Ransom and back at Marta. "Yes, during the whole time he's here. He is mommy's guest." She snuggled her face on them and remembered to fill their bowls with food. "Essen ist angerichtet."[1] Marta whispered to them, and they ran to their doghouse, barking happily from warming their bellies with food. She got up, saw that Ransom was still by the wall, looking at her, and, before returning inside, she told him: "I'm so sorry that my dogs couldn't behave and scared you, Ransom. I promise that I'll do what I can so that this doesn't happen again in the future."

"What's this?" Ransom asked, offended. Marta stopped at the threshold of the glass doors, confused.

"What do you mean? I should have been more firm with the dogs, I'm sorry that they attacked you."

"Are you trying to be on a high horse with me right now?"

"No..."

"Because you want me to apologize, then you're schooling me as if I was a child."

He was… serious. Very serious. And Marta just couldn't comprehend.

"I'm not. I mean, I do want you to apologize, but the dogs can't be blamed here, it's me who is responsible for them, so I'm apologizing. That's how it works, Ransom."

"No, it's not." He walked over her. "You want me to apologize, because you want to have the power here. As if you didn't have enough power being a supernatural entity and all. And you're being manipulative now."

"Where in the Summer's name did you learn that that's how relationships work?" Ransom was genuinely anguished and frustrated with her from what she could see on his face. "Ransom, you know that part of the reason that I suck at being a... how did you call me - supernatural entity - is due to my little-to-no interest in playing mental games and all of that. What you described is _exhausting_ , and I'm really not interested in doing that with you or anyone else."

"This is not a power play?"

Marta ran her hands on her kimono, smoothing nonexistent creases on it and took a deep breath.

"No, Ransom. It's not. You disrespected me; I was angry, I'm still hurt; I'm trying to communicate with you. I'm trying to very clearly tell you what you can do to make it better."

"So what you're saying is that, if I apologize, you won't hold it against me?" He asked, suspicious. "And that you apologized for your dogs because…?"

"Because I care."

"Oh."

This seemed to throw him off. He stayed still, looking so much younger to Marta's eyes at that moment, like a boy who saw through a telescope for the first time. He was fighting with himself. Fighting with his pride and whatever it was that Marta told him that changed things.

"So, uh, sorry, I guess." Marta crossed her arms on her chest and pursed her lips, looking at him in the most intimidating that she could. Ransom laughed, anxious. "Ok, you're not impressed."

"You're not even trying."

"I am."

"So try harder. Convince me that you listened when I told you the reasons why you should apologize."

"And… if I didn't?"

Marta rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Oh, for fucks sake, Ransom, you're not a Fae in your Terrible 30s phase. Get over yourself and just fucking try."

"I'm sorry for… hurting you."

"Yes, and why was that?"

"Because I, hm, disrespected your boundaries?"

"Fine. You're getting a pass because it's clearly your first time apologizing for real to anyone. But, just so you know, this apology was as bad as your Spanish."

Marta went back to her music room. A little while later, Ransom showed up there. He had changed from the kimono from earlier into light grey cashmere sweatpants that, while loose, complimented his legs -- as far as Marta knew his ego, he knew this damn well -- and a moss-green ratty sweater that looked like it had been mended over and over again, but he couldn't part from it because it was very cozy. It was cold already. It would have been colder inside the house if the fireplace wasn't lit. He took a quick look at the piano and the cello playing themselves and turned to Marta.

"Was that it?"

She stopped the music, already tired of this subject:

"Pretty much. Yes. I'm not automatically happy, and it will be a while before I can really move past it, but it's not about you anymore." He kept standing there looking at her, uncomfortable and out of place. "What is it, Ransom?" Marta asked, softer this time.

He looked at the floor, like the veins in the pavement stones or the threads in her Persian rug were more interesting than anything else. Then he raised his head and looked back at her:

"I'm not really a fan of feelings talk."

"I was listening to music; you are the one who came here wanting to talk." Marta tried to keep her tone light.

"According to my watch, it is just 8 P.M. What do you do to pass the time here, when you're not being a farmer?"

"A farmer?"

"Well, that was pretty much what you did earlier today."

"You've never met a farmer in your life, right?"

"No. But that's besides the point. I'm bored."

"Clearly." Marta's lips curled into a smile. "Ok, city boy, let's go to the living room." She got up and stretched her limbs.

Marta's living room had the walls packed with shelves and cabinets filled with the most random knick-knacks. One of them contained all of her board games from a wide variety of eras and places of the world. Once in a while, when Iramaya and Ruth came to visit or she went to see them, she would open it and pick one. She opened its door and turned to see Ransom gazing, fascinated at it. He got closer to take a better look at the shelves and let his fingers run through the boxes.

"I'll let you choose any game you want tonight, while I check on your potion."

"If I win, will you grant me a wish?" He asked, half-joking.

The mixture on the fire was clear already. It would be tasteless. Mother had perfected that recipe over the years to give to women whose husbands would refuse to listen to them about the amount of children. To her and her people, a womb was sacred and shouldn't be adulterated by any drug or sorcery unless it was inevitable. But to stop the testes from breeding was relatively simple and painless. Marta took it out of the fire and took it to the kitchen with her, leaving the cauldron to cool on the stone counter. When she came back to meet Ransom, he was still choosing between the available boxes.

"Can't decide?" She asked, standing by him and eyeing what were the ones that he had separated on the small coffee table beside the cabinet. "Ransom, we can't play five games in the same night."

"I know, I know. I just need to know: will you bet with me or not?"

"First: you won't win." Marta explained very calmly. 

He smiled dangerously at her: "And I'm the cocky one."

"Secondly: I won't give you a blank wish check. Suggest a wager, and I'll see if I accept it. While you think about what it is that you covet and what you can offer me that you think I wish for, I'll change because I'm feeling cold. Your potion will be ready when I'm done."

"Prepare to be defeated!" He shouted, when Marta was already entering her room.

She came out a few moments later, wearing oversized sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, and made all of her random objects that had been accumulating on her coffee table go back to their places, clearing it out for them. When Ransom sat on the rug across from her, Marta had the vial with his potion waiting for him on his side.

"When did you have time to label this bottle with 'Magical Version of The Pill'?" He asked, taking the small bottle and raising it for a better look.

"I enchanted it, obviously. So you've picked Go?"

"Yes, it's a fun game." Marta made a non-committal sound in agreement. She had learned it from Harlan and, she supposed, so did Ransom. He drank the potion in a single gulp. "And I've decided what I want."

"State your terms, meu caro. I play with the whites."

"If I win, you'll make sure that there are no problems with me accessing my share in Harlan's estate."

"That's a dumb request." Marta argued, braiding her hair to get it out of her face during the game. "I've told you it's yours already, and I have every intention to let you have all of it."

"Oh, you were serious yesterday?"

"Ransom, you invited yourself into my house, and I have welcomed you after I had very explicitly released you from your debt and told you that Harlan's inheritance is yours. You saved my life yesterday, we are even. As soon as you get tired of this country life here and go back to the U.S., you will be a very rich man."

He frowned and focused on arranging the board and its pieces, while he thought on something else.

"Ok. If I win, you will show me what's in your basement."

Marta's heartbeat accelerated, but she didn't want to tell him the real reasons why she was keeping him from that room.

"Sure, you're really prone to weird requests today. If you lose, I want your white sweater. The one from yesterday."

"You're playing for _a sweater_? And a bloodstained one?"

"I take the stains out in a minute. Yes, a sweater."

"Fine. Suit yourself." Ransom put the first piece on the board.

Marta would always get into a trance when playing Go, but she could notice that Ransom was good, maybe even better than his grandfather.

"So for the past sixty years, all that you have wanted is a baby." He muttered, after a long stretch of silence.

"Yes and no." Marta answered, placing one of her pieces in a spot that made him widen his eyes. "The main point is: I don't like to keep captives. I don't want you to stay here because you _have_ to, and I don't want a child with someone that doesn't want one in general and with me specifically."

"You had no problems in asking a child from Harlan, and your plan was to take Linda for yourself and raise her, as far as I remember."

"Yes, but when Harlan was here, I was still grieving the loss of my mother, who had died less than thirty years before, and my sister was traveling a lot around the country, looking for our father. I was very lonely." Her voice was but a whisper when she said this.

"Aren't you lonely now?" Marta raised her eyes from the board to look at him, and, in that moment, he seemed genuinely worried about her.

"I am." No spinning on this truth, just putting it out there. Ransom broke eye contact to look on the board again. "But I also had the experience of being in a relationship and raising a child. And missing my father since I was a girl. I don't want a baby like that. Even if it would make me less lonely."

"My father thought that he wanted me." Ransom's voice was quiet, and he kept looking at the board. "My mother thought that she wanted me. They didn't."

"How do you know that?"

"Linda wanted to go back to her business as soon as she could after giving birth, so she handed me to nannies and, sometimes, to Harlan's mom, Grandnana. Richard never actively cared. I liked to spend the weekends at Harlan’s when it was only me. He would teach me about his books and the things that he liked, and I was just so hungry to get his approval that I would pretend to like _everything_ that he showed me."

"Oh, I'm sorry that you grew up feeling like that." Ransom just shrugged at Marta's words, as if it was no big deal to grow up feeling unwanted.

"You won." He declared, stunned. "How did you win?"

Marta waved at the board and stated, with a simple smile:

"I don't play worried about winning, I just want to make a pretty picture."

He got up immediately and marched towards the bedroom. Marta went after him and saw that he was opening his suitcase.

"You tricked me, fairy, I just don't know how yet." 

"Hey, don't tell me you're a sore loser. You wanted to play it, we did."

"Marta, did you enchant the pieces?" He asked while rummaging through his things.

"Ransom! Of course not. I don't think I even could do it, after making a wager with you." Ransom found the bag with dirty clothes and took the sweater out from it, still looking as if he didn't believe in her. "I won fair and square. This sweater belongs to me now."

"Fine."

He threw the sweater in her direction, and Marta caught it. It had three different sources of blood in it and Ransom's energy signature thrumming in every fiber. Just holding it made her glow a little bit stronger. She wanted to smell it, but she was afraid that he was going to find her even weirder than he already did. Marta folded it carefully and tucked it away inside the old armoire with four doors, made of light brown cherrywood, that her father had built over a century ago. When he was home, he liked to work at building things.

At first, the cottage had only the living room, with its magical fireplace, the kitchen, and the basement under it. Mother liked it because he had made the effort for her, but she found it all very weird for most of the time, and she would just refuse to sleep on the bed that he built for her, preferring her hammock. The girls were born on a very special river of still waters nearby -- first Marta, in the Spring, then a couple of years later, in the late Summer, came Alicia -- and were nursed until they chose not to any longer, like their kind and their humans had done with their children for over a millennium. When the girls stopped nursing, Father finished building the bedroom for Mother and himself to sleep in, separated from the children, with a secondary fireplace for the cold winter. Grandmother thought this was all very funny, all very white, of him. She would build houses for herself with wood and straw, and their existence was meant to be fleeting, as everything in the world should be. When Father was there, Mother was braver, she liked the new things that he introduced her to; she liked that he traveled and that he came back, bringing new friends or new things for the house with him

Mother had lived many existences when they were born; Marta never knew how many exactly because she existed since before the humans cared to count the years. Most of those centuries she had spent walking in Grandmother's shadow, healing her every time she went to war, guarding herself from men and their dangers. Father was the first to befriend Grandmother and to have the right to want her most precious possession, even more than her ax. When the army piled the Quilombo near their home and Grandmother died, Mother started looking old and tired. Father was maybe as old as her, maybe older, but he still looked young when he left for good. A couple of years before leaving, he built the room that was now split into three, for Marta and Alicia to sleep in. They were as different as fire and water, but, perhaps for this very reason, the greatest companions that each other had. That is, until Mother died.

Ransom's arms snuck around Marta's waist, and he nibbled gently on her ear.

"Where are you?" He asked, his hands finding the path to her belly under her sweatshirt. "You left me for a moment." Marta sighed and let her head fall on Ransom's chest, feeling herself get warm with his touch.

"I was here." She whispered.

"Liar."

One of his hands was going up and up, counting her ribs with his long soft fingers, until grazing her underboob. His mouth was on her neck, kissing and biting, with a sly smile that she could feel on her skin. Marta couldn't lie; her kind would hurt physically and throw up if they told something that wasn't true from any angle. So she would split the truth, bend it, and embellish it when needed. She was there, with Ransom, but also, a part of her was always lost, always sad; the knowledge that he would leave her drew Marta further to the labyrinth of her past.

But, she couldn't be locked up in the abandonment that was or the one that would always be when Ransom cupped her breast and pinched her nipple, and his own desire started to grow evident against her back. Decided, Marta turned on her heels and pulled him towards herself for a kiss. She wanted to silence the memory of the names he had told her - and the ones he hadn't. She wanted to, foolishly, convince him to stay, to have only her.

Ransom pulled her with him and sat on the bed. Marta straddled him in a mimicry of the kiss on the hotel room's chair; his hands heavy and demanding on her hips. She took her sweatshirt off and, before she could throw it on the bed, his mouth was already on her breast with the same eagerness as, earlier that day, he had found her cunt. Marta moaned loudly, her hands flying to his hair that he had so carefully styled just so Marta could ruin it again. She lowered herself to grind her hips against his, savagely kissing his lips and swallowing the surprised gasp that he exhaled on her mouth. He was fully hard now, Marta realized upon moving her hips on his lap. She could feel her slick pooling on her pants, and her skin felt hot to the touch. Ransom threw her on the bed with no finesse, taking off his sweater, and the waffle shirt beneath it, in a single movement before climbing on top of her. He used one arm under Marta's nape to support himself, getting a better angle to keep kissing her. When his free hand palmed Marta's cunt over her pants, she whined weakly, enveloping his hips with her legs and burrowing her heels on the back of his thighs. Her hands were tracing every curve and detail of his back muscles, committing them to memory.

"I'm here." Marta sighed while he kissed her collarbone. "I'm here."

Those words made Ransom groan against her neck and move his hand from her pubis to the waistband of her sweatpants, pulling them down just enough to leave her ass exposed to his touch. Marta dug her nails on his back, and Ransom hissed, biting her in retaliation. The mix of pleasure and pain made her moan loudly, scratching him and trying to clumsily rut against his erection.

"This… fucking… pants" Marta complained, trying to take them off, but Ransom beat her to it. When Marta was naked and he hadn't come back to her arms yet, she propped herself on her elbows to look at him. "What are you doing?"

"Thinking about how good you tasted earlier today." He wasn't looking at Marta's face; his sole focus was on her cunt.

"You… you don't have to do it again." She could feel her pulse thrumming in her ears.

"I know."

"We could do other things."

"We will." He was very calm when he stroked Marta's legs, slowly and tentatively. She shivered under his touch. "I would like to eat you out again. Unless you don't want me to."

"It's not that I didn't like it. But… Ransom, we could do something for you."

Ransom lifted his blue-green eyes to meet Marta's hazel ones. The air was heavy with promises like the humidity that clung on everything prior to summer showers. In those moments, if one really pays attention, they can _know_ that the air is, indeed, matter and that they could just swallow it, feeling the taste of rain that isn't enough to quench their thirst.

"Yes, we could. Like you telling me that I can enjoy eating you out again." He didn't seem to be lying, and this knocked the wind out of Marta.

" _Yes._ "

"Yes?"

"Yes, Ransom, you can lick my cunt. If you'd rather, I can say it in a few different languages."

"Oh, you can?" He kissed the inner part of her thigh as if there was nowhere else that he would rather be in the world.

"Me chupa."

"Yes." Ransom carefully licked the bruise that already formed on Marta's hip from his earlier bite.

"Lécher ma chéte."

"French, huh?" He traced a stripe from her hip bone to her Venus mound, and Marta gasped. "We are fancy in here."

"Lame mi coño." Ransom used his fingers to spread Marta's folds, and his tongue travelled from her perineum to her clit. "Leck meine Muschi!"

When he nipped and sucked on her outer lips, not caring about her hairs or the pressure that Marta made against his face, she couldn't remember any other ways of saying the same thing. It didn't matter anymore, Ransom had his face buried against her, tongue and lips working nonstop and swallowing every single drip of slick that dripped out of Marta. She trashed her head on the bed, sighing and moaning while he debauched every inch of her, her hands eagerly clutching his hair and demanding him to go, somehow, _deeper_. He used one of his hands - both had been holding her thighs open while he worked Marta's cunt - to slide over her folds and then bury his middle finger to the hilt inside her vaginal canal. This time, he just did it, with no careful preparation. Marta whined loudly. It still burned, but not as much as before. Ransom was pumping his finger inside her and sucking Marta's clit relentlessly, as if he was trying to prove something. For a split second, Marta thought that he was getting back at her for winning that game of Go. There was probably something wrong with her, because, at the moment that this thought occurred to her, Marta orgasmed. It was long and made her toes curl and her body convulse.

Ransom didn't take his finger from her cunt but kept it still as he lazily kissed his way up Marta's body, letting her go boneless in his embrace. She could feel his clothed erection pressing against her leg, while his head rested on her breasts, the sweat from his forehead mixing with the one that had pooled on her chest. She could smell her own sex in the humidity of the air. They were silent for a few dozen heartbeats.

"I want you." She said and immediately surprised herself with how decided her voice sounded on her ears.

"Here, you have me." He had snuck his free arm under her body and was gently scratching her stomach. "What else do you need?"

"I want to know how you will feel inside me." He rested his chin on her chest, looking at Marta, and she got anxious under his stare. Maybe this was a dumb idea. "We don't have to, we can do other things. I've never..." He started to move his finger again, and Marta's brain short-circuited. "Oh."

Ransom sucked on her nipples and took his arm from under her to grope at her hip and thigh, while his free fingers caressed her outer lips.

"I could get addicted to your screams, Marta." He breathed against her nipple before biting her and sucking again, making Marta yelp and moan. She could hear the wet sounds of his finger inside her, then she felt a second finger demanding space and forcing her entrance. Marta cried, scratching Ransom's shoulders. "We can do this. You can have it, Marta, for me. Come on, relax, work with me." Her face was all scrunched up, and she couldn't, in fact, relax on this intrusion. It was too much. It was a dumb idea. "Marta." He called her, and she ignored, whining. "Do you want to stop? If you can't handle it, we don't need to go forward."

Marta breathed through her mouth and opened her eyes, something clicking in her stomach. The whole room was lit up with her light, and Ransom's skin reflected Marta's amber light, making him look like the dreams that she had again and again for the past century in her loneliness. She slid her hips lower, impaling herself on his fingers and wailing through her teeth with the movement. Ransom kept his hand very still and contorted himself to kiss her sweaty jaw, whispering sweet nothings while Marta recovered herself.

"You're doing so well." He said, against her pulsing point on her neck, kissing her softly. "It will be ok. We can stop."

_"No._ " Marta growled, starting to move and fuck his hand. "I want it. I. Am. Not. Fragile." She was almost sitting by then, propped on her hands, angry at being coddled, angry at liking it so much, angry at being just one more of his long list of lovers.

"Look at me." He pleaded, in a strangled way, and Marta complied, opening her eyes again and redoubling her efforts on his hand. Ransom used the heel of his palm to massage her clit, while he stroked her back, and looked at her, starstruck. If she could wish anything, if she had this right, she wanted that night imprinted on his brain for the rest of his life. The friction was actually incredibly good, and Marta let her head fall back while her body worked against his hand, whining loudly. The pressure on the base of her stomach rose again, and, with his expert movements of alternating his fingers stroking inside her, Marta climaxed again, clutching her covers and screaming.

This time Ransom let go of her, and, for a dazed moment, she didn't realize that he was stripping off his pants. Marta raised her head from her mattress, surprised at how much she still wanted him, even if…

"I'm thirsty." She said, almost apologizing. Ransom looked around the room, until he saw her ceramic water pitcher on her bedside table. Marta wished it to fill up, and he poured a glass for her, watching her drink it as if it was his own sacred ritual. She forced him to drink one glass of water too, noticing that his whole body was clammy with sweat, his smell of spices mixing itself with her sex on the air. When he was done, it was Marta's time to pull him to bed with her, licking the traces of herself from his chin and lips. His lips were plumped and abused from his hard work on Marta's sex, tasting herself on his saliva made her almost hungry.

"Fuck me." Marta commanded, holding his head between her hands before kissing Ransom again. Before he could do anything, she sneaked her hand between them and gripped at this cock, surprised with the fact that her hand could barely close around it, and lined it with her cunt. When she couldn't bury it inside herself at once like he had done with his fingers, Marta found out that masturbating with his dick was actually an incredible sensation. She was pumping him with her right hand, while keeping his head on her neck by holding the hairs of his nape, and rubbing herself shamelessly on his glans.

"Fuck… Fuck, Marta." Ransom moaned against her skin, fisting the covers while letting her use him as a plaything. Almost by accident, it entered her, and Marta used the heels of her feet on his ass to keep him going inside her. "Fuck, Marta." It was all that he could say when he used his left hand to hold her within a deathly grip on her hip. He couldn't even bite coherently on her neck, just slopply kiss it and let her determine the speed at which things were happening.

"I'm here. Fuck me." She moaned again, her hands going to his butt and her thighs opening even more. It burned in a way that spread through her body. Marta was home. She was complete in that moment. "Fuck me." She commanded once more before Ransom snapped his hips against her, and she whined against him. "Fuck me."

"I can't… Marta..."

"Fuck me."

The more he sped inside her, the less it burned, and, when she shifted her hips under him, his pelvic bone was pressing against her clit with every rut; Marta could feel herself connected with every leaf and flower from all of the trees in her garden. She was all of them and no one at the same time. She existed just for that moment, just for being with Ransom, in a place where she finally belonged. Her hips tried to meet his movements, but he kept her still; so she started to squeeze him inside her.

"Look at me." He begged from somewhere above her. Marta opened her eyes again, somewhat bothered to be reminded that she was a body and a being, but then immediately rewarded with the contorted expression of pure pleasure on his face. She squeezed him one more time, and he cried out softly, not entirely closing his eyes, looking for something on her that she had no idea what it was. Her body was tingling, and her breathing was erratic. She couldn't just lie down anymore, and every breath would pull her a little out of the bed just to fall again, her hands frantically traveling from Ransom's face to his shoulders and her mouth hanging open. "Are you going to come again?"

"Sim!"

"Come for me." His hand let go of her hip, and his thumb went to her clit, rubbing it with the same fast pace that he dragged himself in and out from her. "Come for me, Marta." He didn't need to ask a third time. Marta was sure that she slashed his arms with the strength of her grip, screaming and losing her capacity to see for a split moment. A shock wave radiated from them, knocking several items from her shelves in the bedroom to the floor. The cacophony of sounds brought Marta back, and she found Ransom with his eyes closed and face lost in his own bliss. She was barely aware of this when she felt him pulsate inside her, and a new wet sensation flooded her vagina and leaked all over her mattress when he collapsed, exhausted, over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... This was explicit. And now you guys know how to demand cunnilingus in 4 languages besides English, I've heard it can be useful.  
> (how to apologize to your girlfriend when you were an idiot is a very useful skill too but Ransom still hasn't mastered it, unlike cunnilingus)
> 
> [1] "Dinner is served", or so Google Translate says. I don't speak German.


	8. Me contento em te ter bem devargarzinho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Marta, I killed a man for you. Do you really think I want to leave you behind?" He asked, his voice should be impossibly soft for a murderer, but Marta knew better.  
> "I didn't ask you to." She said, weakly.  
> "You'd rather he had lived the rest of his life like a bug?" Ransom had a mischievous twinkle in his eye when he asked this. "That's dark, my dear."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took a while to update this time. Mostly because it's been hard to work on my thesis and to have the creative energy to write fiction too. But fear not, my dears, all chapters are outlined and the next ones are even partially written. I won't abandon you.
> 
> This chapter is named after a line in the song ["Bixinho"](https://open.spotify.com/track/04RFAnuBZkyITGUNIbZHhb) (it translates as something like "my pet" or "my boo" and is written in colloquial Portuguese) from Duda Beat. "Me contento em te ter bem devargarzinho" translates to "I'm contented in having you very slowly", but, again, this is not a precise translation since "devagarzinho" is a diminutive version of "devagar" (slow) and is a way of speaking when endeared. What? Portuguese is a language more charming than English can capture, I'm just sorry for you guys to not having cute diminutives.
> 
> If anyone is interested in seeing the moodboards for this story or knowing just how much of a nerd I am, you can come say hi [on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/nerd_leoa)  
> Follow me, DM me, let's chat about fairytales and charming assholes!

Marta woke up with the sound of the rain hitting her windows. No, not rain, it was a full-blown storm that engulfed the world around them. She sat on the bed, startled, remembering that Cloak and Dagger were probably stranded out there inside their dog house, if they were able to find cover. Her whole body was sore and drained, but Marta dragged herself out of bed thinking about her dogs. When she put her feet on the ground, she realized a few things: she was still naked, it was a chilly day, the room was empty, and… and there were flowers everywhere. Marta looked around, shocked and amazed, at the cherries blossoming from her bed and her armoire, both objects built over a century ago. There were vines climbing on her walls, filled with a myriad of multicolored small flowers. She almost wasn't glowing anymore, her light was dimmed to a faint glimmer that could easily be ignored.

The living room was filled with the smell of coffee; Marta almost couldn't believe it when she saw Ransom sitting nonchalantly on her couch, sipping coffee from one of her mugs, and reading one of her police novels. He was dressed with the same clothes that he wore the past night.

"Good morning."

He raised his eyes from the page and smiled at Marta.

"Good morning. I thought you were going to sleep all day, and I would have to make do with bread and jam."

"You can't cook?"

"Some things. Breakfast food." He shrugged like it was obvious.

"What's 'breakfast food' for you?"

"You know. Eggs, smoothies, the occasional pancake from the box."

"There should be fresh eggs on the kitchen counter." She was still worried about Cloak and Dagger, and, now, she couldn't believe that she would have to worry about feeding Ransom too. When she took a few more steps, a bark from the porch startled her. She turned around, and they were there, sitting together and wagging their tails, safe from the rain.

"Oh, yeah, your dogs came over. I didn't let them in because they're super muddy."

"Sure." Marta walked towards her kitchen, passing by Ransom. "Look, the eggs are on the counter just like I told you."

"How?" He asked, closing the book and following her. "They weren't when I made the coffee."

"They're an offering that a friend always puts in a tree outside their pen house. I guess they only get here when I summon them? I don't know, Ransom, magic isn't ruled by logic." She checked the pantry, and, having confirmed that there was still food for the dogs, she let them in, summoning their bowls from their house to the kitchen. They passed, running by Marta and Ransom, to go straight to the food on the corner. Marta brought a glass jar filled with granola and another with honey back with her to the kitchen table.

"So what are the limits? If you can clean your dogs by willing them to be clean and make objects appear out of thin air, why do you take baths, why do you work in the orchard?" 

"Like I said, there's no logic, and it's not science. I can't -- or couldn't, I have no idea what's going on with my magic lately - create new objects just willing them into existence. I can move them from one place to another, and the distance is irrelevant, if I can picture where the object is and where I want them to be. I can will myself to be clean; but it's really not the same as actually being clean, because this water makes me stronger. So, here are some things that you can eat, if you want to. I have no… _box_ of pancakes, whatever that means, but there are ingredients for pancakes in the pantry if you want."

He opted for making just scrambled eggs and taking some slices of bread with it. Marta ate some of his eggs -- too salty for her taste - and then began making a shepherd's pie for their lunch. There was a butcher in the city who Marta had helped save his business more than once, and she had free access to his meat, just needing to wish for it and, if he had it in stock, it would appear on her counter. Marta and Ransom ate together and passed the afternoon playing board games with no bets. They spent the week that passed under the raging storm exploring Marta's many boxes of different and exotic games and discovering new things to do together in bed.

The rain eventually stopped, and, to Marta's surprise, Ransom volunteered to help her evaluate the damage done on her orchards. He was mostly useless and left her working alone after no more than an hour. To her even greater surprise, he returned at noon with a plate of food -- leftovers from the dinner that she had tried to teach him to cook on the last evening - already warmed up for her. He sat by her side on a fallen tree while she ate, observing the mud and the tracks left behind from the storm. Her crops had suffered, and she had to sing enchantments to reanimate some of her herbs.

They ate in silence the first day, and she went back to work. It became some sort of ritual for them for the next week.

"Can I spread Harlan's ashes on your orchard?" Ransom asked on the sixth day after the rain. Marta raised her eyes from her plate and looked at him, puzzled. "I realize that most of what he said in his will was bullshit, but I think that, ruse aside, he really wanted to be here with you. You were his best friend, after all."

"Do you want to put him at my mother's roots?" Marta asked him, holding his hand and smiling. Her mother had turned into a beautiful paineira with pink flowers near the master bedroom window. The tree was almost thirty meters high and, soon, would be in bloom in December.

"Sounds good." Ransom answered and shrugged like it didn't matter, but he had thought about it enough to want to put him to rest there; so Marta knew he actually cared.

That dusk, they dressed in white per Marta's insistence and went barefoot near the tree. Ransom had the small box with Harlan's ashes in his hands and seemed actually hesitant to perform the small ceremony. Marta caressed the tree trunk tenderly.

"Hi, mom, I bring a friend here to keep you company now. You guys didn't meet, but I think you would have liked him. He was charming and had a dangerous smile. He fooled me. Maybe you would see through him if you were here, I don't know." She turned to Ransom and reached her hand to him. "Do you want to say something?"

"To your mother...?" He narrowed his eyes at Marta, skeptical. "What should I say? Hi, nice to meet you, Mrs. Tree, I'm the guy fucking your daughter? Ah, also, I'm kind of magically bound to her, we don't completely understand the details or why the enchantment skipped a generation in my family?"

"No, Ransom!" Marta gently slapped his bicep. "To your grandfather, it's his memorial."

"He already had a memorial, Marta." He retorted, speaking slowly.

"And what did you say then?"

"Nothing, I skipped the funeral and everything else." There it was again, that nonchalant shrug.

"What?" Marta asked, incredulous. "Why?"

"I wasn't welcome there, my whole family thinks I'm an asshole. It's _really_ ironic that I was the end of Harlan's bargain to you. You seriously were shortchanged, dear."

It was Marta's turn to look skeptic at him.

"Why does your whole family think you're an asshole?"

Another shrug.

"Because I am. It's a long list of reasons that go from locking Meg in the dog house when she was two and I was five, because I disliked not being the only kid around anymore, to, you know, almost being expelled from college due to totalling my Porsche in a fender-bender at nineteen. I also had sex with several of Meg's friends from college and never called them back, but this part, you don't want to know the details."

"None of this makes you look like an angel, but they don't justify being unwelcome to your own grandfather's funeral either." Marta prodded further.

"Can we just do this, Marta, please?"

"Fine. But I wasn't at his funeral either, so I'll say something even if you don't."

"Fine."

She took the box from his hands and opened it to take a handful of the ashes and held it in front of her.

"Goodbye, my friend. Your debt is settled. I loved you like a brother, you tricked me, so that was very sibling-like of you by my standards. Ransom is not a total asshole, you should know. He deserves more credit than you seemed to give him, and I'm happy that we met. I'm happy that he is here. I hope you're happy too, and, one day, when we all meet again, you both can have a chance to try again." She opened her hand, and the evening breeze took the ashes away. They spiraled in pretty patterns around Ransom and Marta and turned into grains of light before disappearing in the air.

Ransom started laughing. Marta turned to him, and she saw that he had his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose and his head bowed down.

"Of course there would be magic. Magic. Fine, old man, you win." He put his hand inside the box and took a bunch of ashes from it. "Everyone thinks I'm some kind of monster, and you never helped, you never corrected them." He threw the ashes angrily on the ground. They floated around his face, and Ransom batted away the light from him. "You thought that my temper was funny when I was little, and then you and Richard started to argue with me in screaming matches like I was an adult." He took another handful of ashes from the box, and he threw it before speaking again. "I wasn't. I didn't 'have your temper,’ I was a teen. And then I got tired of trying, Harlan, and you decide to pull the rug from beneath my feet again! And here I am in god-damned fairyland!" He took the whole box from Marta's hands and turned it upside down at once. She was just looking at his outburst, surprised. "How. Did. You. Do. It?! How were you every bit of an asshole and people still loved you? Fuck me, right, Harlan? I guess we will see each other in the afterlife, which, apparently, is a real thing."

He turned away and left stomping without looking again at Marta.

  
  


He was laying on the bed with his face turned to the wall. Marta sat beside him and tried to touch his shoulder. Ransom flinched, and she withdrew her hand.

"You're leaving soon." She whispered, feeling heartbroken.

"Do you want me to?"

"No. But, after today, I thought that you might be unhappy here."

"And your solution to this is to give me an ultimatum?" His voice was strained and very harsh.

"I didn't mean for that to sound like an ultimatum..."

He looked briefly at her over his shoulder and laughed, dry, but amused:

"And what did you mean with that sentence?"

"Just… to state something that I have observed. Give you the opportunity to say what's on your mind..." She eyed him quickly; Ransom was back looking at the wall. Marta started playing with a lock of her hair, dreading what he would answer.

"Family is tricky, Marta, I thought that you knew that already." This time he sounded tired, almost sad. He rolled on the bed to lay on his back, still not meeting Marta's eyes. Ransom was looking at the ceiling like there was something interesting there. "But you're right in a way, this past week I have been thinking about my unfinished businesses and how I would have to find a way to contact my lawyer and meet him in Rio or São Paulo sometime soon."

"You don't want to go back to the U.S.?" She asked, carefully.

"I would like to visit my home country again, someday, but I'm not eager to go back. It's not like I really have anyone to go back to." There was laughter in his voice and that crooked smile but he still wasn't looking at her. "Can you see yourself bearing to get on a plane or boarding a ship sometime in the next year or so?"

"Next year?"

"Linda is not young you know."

"And you want me to go with you?" Her voice was small. Only Alice ever asked her to accompany her, but she wanted them both to run away aimlessly and Marta said no. The others never reached or waited for Marta. This time Ransom turned his head to Marta, looking puzzled.

"You have to stay here forever? You can't travel, can't know different places?"

She didn't know how to answer.

"I..."

"You told me your father left and you have a sister, right? She doesn't live here."

Marta focused herself on watching the leaves dancing in the wind on the trees outside. She could leave if she wanted to… Maybe.

"Who will protect the forest? What about my house?"

"Can't you cast a spell to protect the house? I'm not trying to force you into anything, I just want to know why you've spent so long here. Why do you think that the fact that I don't want to stay _here_ forever means that I don't want to stay _with you_."

Marta turned to look at Ransom back, her eyes filled with water. She thought all this time that she had to be still like a mountain. But even the mountains in the Atlantic Forest move. The earth rolls on itself with the rain and drags everything on the way. Marta thought that she needed to guard forever a story that wasn't hers and never write anything of her own. She wanted a child because, then, someone else would be trapped there with her. And Ransom wanted her. And wanted freedom. Freedom was so scary. Freedom was not knowing. Father was a wanderer and Mother died when he left. What was she, if not the guardian of her dead ones?

"Marta, I killed a man for you. Do you really think I want to leave you behind?" He asked, his voice should be impossibly soft for a murderer, but Marta knew better.

"I didn't ask you to." She said, weakly.

"You'd rather he had lived the rest of his life like a bug?" Ransom had a mischievous twinkle in his eye when he asked this. "That's dark, my dear."

Marta let a wet laugh escape and she just shook her head, not really saying anything.

"Come with me." He asked, more explicitly this time. She opened her mouth and no sound came out. Wanting was a dangerous game. Could Marta want to fly away with Ransom? He touched her cheek and wiped out a tear that had escaped from her eyes. "Want me, Marta. Don't change your mind like everyone else does."

So she closed her eyes and found out that she wanted to be brave, she wanted to be her own person, with Ransom. Marta could smile then. She didn't care about what games Ransom could be playing with her. They made a nice picture together.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"I'll travel with you whatever you want to go. We can make it work." Her hands went to his face and she lay on the bed by his side. She would travel with him, they would make it work. He wanted her to go along. She could be a traveller too. He pulled her towards him for a kiss.

"I still don't want to permanently live here or in Teresópolis."

"We will make it work, city boy."

He kissed her again, harder. And he would take her with him whatever he went.

  
  


***

Ruth was at the doorstep waiting for them with open arms and a huge smile when Ransom stopped the rental on their driveway. She was tiny, about twenty centimeters smaller than Marta, and her skin had a deep tone of black, with cool undertones. Her coily hair was always trimmed short according to the current fashion, or so Marta thought, since she was careful with every aspect of her appearance. That day, Ruth was wearing a linen button-up shirt with short sleeves and an arara print.

"Martinha, querida, acabamos de servir o almoço! Maya passou na cidade hoje e trouxe umas trutas fresquinhas para a gente." [2] Marta ran towards her friend and held her tight in her arms.

"Eu estava com muita saudade!" [3]

"Tem o quê? Um mês da sua última..." Ruth gently pushed Marta away from her and looked at Ransom, who was tucking his shades in his pocket with one hand, while bracing the board games that they had brought to the house with the other. "Quem é o alemão?" [4]

Marta reached her hand to Ransom, who reached her at the first doorstep.

"Ele é gringo, mas não é alemão. Ruth, esse é o Ransom." [5]

Ransom shook the hand that Ruth offered him and gave her dashing a smile.

"Ransom, this is Ruth, she's Maya's wife."

"So, we are going with English tonight? Nice to meet you, man." Ruth let go of Ransom's hand and turned to her house, signaling them to follow her. "Amor, Martinha brought a yankee for dinner!"

Ruth had designed their house about fifteen years ago. Before that, she and Maya had lived in a small apartment in Teresópolis, and Ruth would drive to Rio for work every day. Then she became famous in some circles by her skills in eco-friendly architecture and sustainable houses. Now she had a team she would meet in Teresópolis just a few times a week, and they did most of her contacts -- when she wasn't involved in a project.

Their house was made entirely with recycled materials, and they basically only depended on the outside world for the internet, since they got most of their energy from solar panels and water from the rain was collected in tanks. They had a large property inside a closed community between Teresópolis and Petrópolis, one of those in which people mostly had second homes or went to retire. Ruth preserved most of the forest on her acres, sheltering them from landslides -- not that they really needed it, since Marta cast a protection spell on their house. They loved those woods as much as Marta, and that made her love for them even greater.

The house interior was decorated in a charming rustic style. Sculptures and paintings gifted from their friends in the Brazilian art community shared space with Marta's several amulets of protection. Maya was by their bar, cutting some fruits in a board and throwing them in the cocktail shaker with some generous amounts of cachaça.

It was a beautiful and hot spring day, and Marta knew it was time to go visit two of her favorite humans the moment that she woke up. She dragged Ransom along with her, and he didn't argue when she said that Ruth would also know that they were coming. Ruth could hear the forest and talk to the dead. She was a candomblé priestess and a practitioner since she was a little girl. Ruth used to say that, when she met Maya in the Carnival of '89, she could instantly tell that she had found her home. They married in her religion in '93, and, due to the irony of Maya's papers, they were also able to get married in the civil court two decades before equal marriage being legalized in Brazil.

"Hi there, I'm Iramaya!" Maya greeted them with her thick accent. "Do you know how to make caipirinhas, galego?" [6]

Ransom gave the board games to Ruth and went to help Maya make the drinks, while Marta and Ruth went to the patio to finish setting the table. As usual, Ruth just knew that Marta would bring a guest and put four seats at the table.

"Cê tá brilhando, Martinha." [7] Ruth casually said, sitting in front of her by the table and serving them with lemonade.

Marta looked down at her arms; they didn't seem that shiny, just a slight glow.

"Sério? Acho que eu não tenho prestado muita atenção nisso mais. Meio que acostumei." [8]

"Tá assim desde que ele chegou?" [9] Ruth asked, sipping her drink and knowingly gazing at Marta from the rim of her glass.

"É, acho que sim." [10] It had started on the night of their first meeting, after being thoroughly kissed on his hotel bed. Marta blushed a little with the thought and drank her lemonade.

Ransom and Maya arrived at the patio. He was carrying a tray with three glasses of caipirinhas and a pitcher.  
"Did you know that this gringo knows how to make fancy drinks? He wanted to drink some weird thing with whiskey and eggs..." Maya said, with a laughing tone, sitting by Ruth's side.

"It's a simple whiskey sour." Ransom replied, putting one of the glasses in front of Marta and smiling. "Anyway, I can see clearly that you raised Iramaya, because she's every bit of bossy that you are and forbade me to have any 'gringo drinks' today. So I'm having a passion fruit caipirinha, because, apparently, that was allowed."

Marta laughed, smelling the glass in front of her and realizing that it had wild lemon, brown sugar, and lemongrass in it, along with cachaça and ice. A perfect drink for a perfect afternoon.

"I wasn't aware that you're drinking now, Martinha." Maya teased her, ignoring Ransom's complaints. Marta just shrugged.

"You don't usually drink?" Ransom asked, turning to look at her.

"I don't. It's easier for people to take advantage of you when you're under the influence of drugs." She answered, omitting that she had stopped drinking after Harlan's escape.

"But you drank on our date." He countered.

"Date?" Maya asked, wiggling her brows. "You're dating now, madrinha?"

Marta felt a strong blush creeping to her cheeks and took a big gulp of the caipirinha in front of her. It was strong. She coughed, tearing up due to the alcohol. 

"Meu amor, there's no need to pry onto Marta's business. She's a big girl, she can date a gringo if she wants to." Ruth scolded Maya, gently poking her arm. "You have to excuse my wife, Ransom, it's just that, even if we are used to meeting Marta's new friends and favorites..."

"We are not dating." He stated, very nonchalantly. "We had _a_ date, two weeks ago, and then she kidnapped me."

"No one kidnapped you! You invited yourself to my home!" Marta could feel the alcohol on her veins, and she was aware that her glow was getting red too.

"Yes, yes. And then you tricked me with your fairy ways, and I can't find the willpower to leave your side, even if this means living in a place without electricity and the internet."

"I did not!" She protested, looking at him. And then, turning to Maya and Ruth, she emphasized: "You guys don't believe him, right? You know I don't kidnap and trick people."

They burst in laughter.

"Oh Ransom, how can you rile her up like that? Don't you fear spending a few years as a monkey or something like that if she gets too crossed?" Maya asked, wiping the tears out of the corners of her eyes. Ransom's smile got bigger, and he drew an arm around Marta's shoulders:

"What can I say? I'm confident that she might like me better just as I am right now."

"Ok, ok, that's enough you two." Ruth interrupted them. "Listen, Ransom, I agree with you on the project of modernizing that cottage."

"I let you do that already, Ruth." Marta complained, leaning her head on Ransom's shoulder. He could be annoying, but he smelled so good.

"Twenty years ago." Ruth retorted. "And you didn't let me install a single electric wire then. I know you have issues with connecting with the outside world, but it wouldn't be necessary. I can order a small solar panel for your cottage and use soft and quiet LED lamps that last for years."

"Oh, that would bring us to the 1920s, Marta!" Ransom squeezed her arm in an affectionate manner.

"Ugh, bringing you here was a mistake." Marta jokingly sighed. "Fine. I'll think about it. I'm not saying yes."

Ruth raised her hands to the sky, theatrically, and Maya congratulated Ransom for being able to bend her stubbornness. Maya kissed Ruth's temple after making a plate for her with the grilled fish, farofa with plantains, and salad. Marta loved them so much. Ransom made a plate for himself, praising the food. He shared stories of his travels and how much of an adventurous gourmand he was. They ate and laughed.

When they finished eating, Marta and Ruth entered the house to take the leftovers to the kitchen. And Ransom stayed behind to help Maya gather the dirty dishes, when she bluntly asked him:

"How did you manage to enter her life out of the blue? Were you hurt?"

"No. Why? Marta has a Florence Nightingale thing?" He answered. Maya pursed her lips for a moment.

"She's a helper. She can't stop herself from helping people. What do you want from her?"

"I..."

"He's Harlan's grandson." Marta answered. She was leaning on the patio's door frame, arms crossed on her chest, and looking very serious. "He belongs to me."

Maya looked back at Ransom, and he just raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Like I said, she bewitched me."

This made Marta groan, impatient, and roll her eyes, going back inside the house.

"Not like I'm doing a cross interrogation or anything but I was curious to know how you found Marta. You were just a child, right?" Ransom asked Maya.

Iramaya took a hand-rolled cigarette from her shirt's pocket and lit it up before answering him.

"I was almost twelve when my stepfather decided that it was time to beat me up until I turned into a man. I ran away after the second ineffective session." She exhaled the smoke into the air.

"He didn't like that you were a girl?" Ransom asked.

"He didn't believe that I was a girl. No one did, until I met her. I was lost in the woods, and she appeared in the middle of the night. I thought that I had died, that I was completely insane." She drew another heavy breath of the cigarette. "When I told her I was a girl, she answered with 'obviously.’ She raised me, taught me all that I know, helped choose my name, and made sure that everyone always saw the real me."

"Wow." He suddenly understood. "So you are..."

"Trans. Yeah. It's not a bad word, galego, you can say it."

Marta and Ransom won every single game they played together, so Ruth and Maya first proposed that they should separate the couples. They played the whole afternoon and left when the sun wasn't so harsh anymore. The late afternoon breeze started to bring goosebumps to their skins, and the forest buzzed with the dying heat.

***

Marta took Ransom by the hand through the woods after they left the board games and the gifts that Maya gave her in the cottage. There was no trail, but Marta knew her way; she could hear her birthplace calling her.

They walked for an hour until they got to a clearing in the woods. A few steps ahead was a huge waterfall roaring furiously. Panthers, monkeys, and capybaras drank from its waters peacefully side by side. Butterflies rested calmly on the backs of lazy alligators, slowly opening and closing their wings. The sun creeped through the branches of the immense trees. She let Ransom be amazed by the view for a few moments and pulled him with her to walk in the margin, until they reached the stones in the waterfall. The waters opened for her like curtains, and they got into the actual place she wanted to take him. The cave hidden in the heart of the mountain -- its walls were high as those of cathedrals' and made of shiny crystal stones, and, in the center of the cave, there was a pool of transparent waters where Marta and Alice were born, two centuries in the past.

"Wow, Marta, this place is..." Ransom whispered, reverently.

"Sacred." She answered in the same tone, letting go of his hand and turning to look at his face. "I was born here. I wanted to bring you with me here because it's my favorite place in the world."

He brought a hand to her face and tenderly caressed her with his thumb. Marta closed her eyes for a moment with the pleasure, and, when she opened them again, she saw that her glow was being refracted by the crystals, creating several rainbows around them. She stepped back and started removing her clothes. Ransom followed her without saying a word, and, once naked, he pulled her in for a kiss. Marta laced her arms around his neck. The pool's warm waters shone brightly when Marta stepped into them, recognizing her. It was bright as day there.

They just lazily kissed for a while, gently caressing each other under the water.

"Where is your favorite place in the world?" She asked him, still whispering. Something flashed in Ransom's eyes, a hunger of unknown origin. But it faded away as quickly as it appeared, and he smiled back at her.

"I could be corny and say 'here', but I'll have to say Barcelona. The parties are great, and the city is beautiful."

Marta laughed with his answer, and her laugh echoed in the crystals like a wind chime. Ransom looked around, as if following the sound.

"I will take you there with me someday, if you want to."

"I do."

"You may even find out you like parties."

"I will make no such promises, galego. But, even if I don't like them, I don't see why you can't enjoy them without me. We are not joined at the hip, you know."

Ransom playfully bit her neck and pulled her closer to him, rubbing his sex against her hipbone:  
"Not all the time, we aren't."

***

Before going back to the house, Marta asked permission to the cave and took a piece of crystal with her. She would carve it for a couple days under the full moon, whispering spells and pouring her heart to the stone, repeating the same wish she had made to Beatriz: please love, be safe. When it was done, it had the shape of a toad, and, on its belly, Marta made graphisms [11] of protection and wrote Saxon runes of strength [12]. That way, Ransom could leave whenever he wanted to and Marta would know that he had always the mountain with him.

She still needed to spin the gold for the threads that would hold the stone, but that demanded going to the basement; so she put that off for a while. The truth remained that, while Marta wanted to be brave, she was still afraid of the consequences of opening that part of the house and herself to him. So she settled for hiding the amulet inside his suitcase, leaving it in a safe place for her to come back to before the Solstice party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Paineira: Huge and beautiful tree native of the South American tropical forests. It can live for centuries and, from its bark, you can extract a fiber similar to cotton.  
> [2] "Martinha, dear, we just finished up setting the table for lunch! Maya stopped by the city today and brought back some fresh trouts for us!"  
> [3] "I've missed you guys so much!"  
> "Saudade" is not actually translatable. It is the feeling of missing someone or something, but it's a good nostalgic happiness, it can be idyllic too.  
> [4] "It has been, what? A month since your last… (...) Who is the german dude?"  
> Translating "alemão" to "german dude" is a literal translation that maintains the informality of the expression, but, in Rio, people call super white people "alemão", regardless of their origin. You can be Brazilian and be called an "alemão". The same does not apply to "gringo".  
> [5] "He is a gringo, but not german. Ruth, this is Ransom."  
> Here Marta chooses to engage literally with the word "alemão", as a means to state Ransom's nationality.  
> [6] Galego: a term of endearment for fair-headed people like blondes and redheads.  
> (also, I know I talk a lot about caipirinhas, I just LOVE them and they're a very easy drink to make, ok? If you gringos can write all the time about whisky and martinis, you will excuse my obsession with caipirinhas)  
> [7] "You're shining, Martinha" -- they're speaking in a very informal Portuguese. I don't know how to translate this to English.  
> [8] "Really? I don't really pay attention to it anymore. I'm kinda used to it"  
> [9] "It's like this since he arrived?"  
> [10] "Yeah, I guess so"  
> [11] "Graphism" is an anthropological term for patterns and drawings in Native cultures, in Brazil, they're especially important because many cultures had no written forms of their language until the 20th Century and the graphisms were tools to convey ideas and tell stories.  
> [12] The amulet Marta carves for Ransom was inspired by the amulets that the Native People from the Amazon region use, they usually have the shape of toads, snakes, or turtles. They're normally made out of amazonite, a green stone, but here Marta used crystal. The name of this amulets is "muyrakytãs" and it's believed that they give power and protection to the people that wear it close to their hearts. Their legends are also associated with the power of the love poured in the stone by the person who carved them.


	9. Por que cresceste, curuminha?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He hugged her and kissed her neck before whispering:  
> "Do you want me to propose marriage to someone whose name I don't even know?"  
> "Well, that's a very good question for you to sort out, don't you think?"  
> "You want me to work for it, then?"  
> "If you know my name when you decide to ask me to marry you, then I would have no choice but to say yes. Like I said, just tell me my name and I'll give you anything. Even a dumb request like spinning gold."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Why did you grow up, curuminha?" is the question that the title poses, and it's also the first line of ["Uma canção desnaturada"](https://open.spotify.com/track/2t6n79GiswP8sZQr793Pcn) (A monstrous song) by Chico Buarque. "Curumim" is a common word in indigenous languages of the Amazon region and means "child", more precisely, "boy". "Curuminha" is an adaptation, utilizing the endeared diminutive of the Portuguese, to feminize the word and to mean "little girl" to those who hear it, but it's a neologism.

"You reek of humans."

Marta almost dropped the basket of fruits she was carrying on the ground, spooked by the voice she hadn't heard in almost a year. She turned around, and Alice was by the end of the woods, sitting on a fallen tree; her arrows were in a quiver on her hip, her bow was between her legs, planted on the floor, and she rested her chin on it. She was wearing a simple cotton dress with no sleeves. Her hair was long and shining in all of its blackness, her brown skin was beautifully painted with jenipapo and urucum [1], and her stomach was round and dilated.

"Sister. You… are pregnant." Marta felt a pang in her chest. Alice was never maternal nor interested in kids. Life really wasn't fair.

"Yes. I found a mate. They like to hunt evil men with me. It's fun." Her sister smiled, showing her sharp canines, fond of her memories of slaughter, and Marta felt a shiver running through her spine. Alice was always too much like Grandmother and Father, too much settled on the old ways. "And you… have you adopted another human pet?"

"Not exactly." Marta was suddenly worried about Ransom alone in the house. She was trying to slowly prepare him for what the Solstice party would be, and now her sister was there, talking about hunting humans. "He is mine. My payment for something I gave his grandfather, decades ago."

"But, sister, you're bedding him. I can smell it in your skin." Alice sounded worried. "The last time you took a human for a lover, things didn't end up well..."

"What do you mean? Bia is safe, she's alive. I visit her dreams every once in a while to be sure, and Maya shows me the news about her and her family. She's thriving." Marta was annoyed with this conversation, and she started walking towards the cottage again, trying to think about how she would manage with her sister's surprise visit.

"Estrela… You didn't leave this forest for ten years after she left. And you only went back to the human world because Maya and I forced you to."

"What do you want, sister? Why are you here?" Marta lashed out.

"Father is coming."

It was a week before the Solstice. Father hadn't come to see her in the past century, so why was he there now?

"For what?"

"It's your birthday, isn't it?" Alice said as if this was a good enough answer.

"Not for another week, no. And he hasn't bothered to show up for the past hundred ones, why is this one special?"

"I don't know, sister. It's not like he explains things to me either. I met him a few months ago when I was with Raoni [2] in São Paulo's countryside helping some of our human friends, when Father just showed up out of nowhere and helped us kill the trespassers."

This made Marta stop at the kitchen door and turn to her sister:

"Trespassers?"

"Evil men, sister. Caraíba who burn the forest and hurt the humans who still honor us. Raoni and I are gathering others like us to help our humans." Alice was close to her now, and Marta could smell her mate on her sister's skin and almost hear the cries of the battle on her bow.

"Are you talking about war?"

"If you left this place, sister, you would know that we never stopped being at war. And we are losing. Do you want to keep hidden here or are you ready to do something about it?"

"I don't want to meddle in human affairs, _Andraste_." [3] Marta used her name, her real name. It had been so long since they said it out loud that the word sounded foreign on her mouth. Alice laughed with disdain and retorted:

"You just like to bed them, right, Ka..."

"Marta, who are you talking to?" Ransom opened the kitchen door, interrupting their argument.

He was wearing a blue navy shirt with a v-neck, which he explained earlier to Marta was a "designer cotton slub tee,” and off-white linen joggers, artfully untied and the legs and pulled up slightly to the bottom of his calf muscles, showing off his ankles. The day was incredibly hot, and he had spent most of it reading on her front porch. They had agreed that they would go to a New Year's party that one of his friends was throwing on a private island near Paraty. It would be the counterpart of him going with her to Benoit and Elliott's party. It would also be their first attempt to travel together and see if what they had worked outside her world. Ransom was happier and less restless since she agreed with the plan. They also hadn't explicitly talked about the whole "getting pregnant on the Solstice" thing. Marta had decided that she wanted to wait, to travel with him, and enjoy this possibly new side of herself before having a kid. Ransom had said, almost two months before, that he didn't know if he wanted to be a father, and that was it. The hard truth that she didn't like to admit even to herself was that, if she did the ritual and it worked, he would forgo all of his promises to her and leave.

"So you're the human." Alice said, looking at Ransom with disgust. She was shorter than Marta, but the feral energy crackling on her skin was a strong warning that she should be taken seriously.

Marta took a step to the side, putting herself between Alice and him. Cloak and Dagger came towards Marta, intrigued by the new voice, too.

"His name is Ransom, and you will treat him with respect in my house, Alice." Marta's snarl made the trees shake in the orchard. She could bare her teeth, too.

But Alice laughed with disdain again, as if Marta was the younger and sillier sibling.

" _Our_ house, sister."

"You left!" Marta retorted, angrier. She pushed Ransom inside the house, putting herself completely in front of the door. He didn't resist. When she looked at him in that moment, Marta thought, for a second, that he looked amused at her anger and protectiveness.

"My umbilical cord is buried under this house just like yours! This cottage is _ours,_ _Marta,_ and I have a say in the pets you put inside it!"

The dogs began snarling and barking at Alice, standing by Marta's side. She was no warrior like her sister, but she wouldn't let her hurt Ransom.

"You left!" She screamed, and the earth shook under her feet. Her trees had uprooted themselves from the ground and began circling Alice, threateningly. "You are still the same spoiled little brat who thinks you can come and go as you please and..."

"Hey, hey, listen, before this turns into a carnage, can we try to get to know each other and be civilized perhaps?" Ransom put his hand on Marta's shoulder and reached with the other towards Alice. "Hi, yes, I'm Ransom, the human. Your sister's newest pet. She's training me to be as well behaved as her dogs, and I hope that I don't grate too much on your nerves... Alice, it is, right?"

To Marta's surprise, her sister laughed. Laughed, a real and open laugh. She grabbed Ransom by his forearm, shaking it with vigor.

"I like this one! He is funny! A funny little human!"

Ransom squeezed Marta's shoulder and gave her a glare full of meaning, before looking back at Alicw and laughing too.

"Yep, that's me! A funny little human. You should see me in less deadly situations, then I'm a blast."

When Alice let go of Ransom's hand, he put it on Marta's other shoulder, almost as if holding her in place. She was very still, worried about how the situation would unfurl. Alice was volatile.

"Aren't you going to invite me in, sister?" Alice asked as if nothing had happened.

"Isn't this your house too? Why do you need an invitation then?" Marta stood her ground, with her chin held high.

"C'mon, Marta..." Ransom whispered in her ear.

She turned to him, very stern: "You still don't get it, Ransom. I'm trying to see if she can cross the threshold uninvited and unwanted." And then, turning back to Alice, she added "Come on, sister. If this _is_ your house and you don't need to respect the laws of hospitality, you should have no problems following us."

Alice seemed to have lost her bravado. Marta saw in her eyes the small girl who would rescue baby animals and cry when she saw something unfair happening. A lightning bolt crackled near them, and a strong wind enveloped everything. There was a big summer storm coming. Marta could feel the lost smell of her childhood at the moment that the hairs of her nape stood up.

"He is here." Alice said, worried, looking first at her sister and then at Ransom. "Sister, you know I wouldn't..."

"I know." Marta got outside and took Alice's hands into hers, bringing her inside the cottage. The wind was stronger. Another thunder rolled, closer now.

"Do not leave the house, human." Alice warned him, locking the kitchen door behind her. " _Do_ _not_ tell him your full name, and don't think that König is like anything you've ever encountered, do you hear me?"

Marta got closer to Ransom, running her hands on his face, and began to whisper spells to ward off the evil.

"Meine Töchter." The soft voice came from the living room. Marta's throat closed on itself, and bile rose from her stomach.

The house wasn't really hers, after all. She would have to leave permanently with Ransom on New Year, build something for them only. Marta thought that the renovations she had made on her own with Ruth and Maya over twenty years ago were enough to claim her rights to that ground. She was wrong.

"Don't trust him." She whispered, holding his hands. "I will try to protect you, but don't trust him."

"It's a good thing that I don't trust anyone by default, then." Ransom answered her with a small laugh.

"You joke, human. This is not a moment to joke." Alice snarled at him.

"Why are we speaking the language of the Brits, kinder?" König had walked into the kitchen.

To a human, he would look like a man in his fifties. His age couldn't be measured in years, since he existed before humans began counting the cycles of the sun. He changed names over the many stories the humans told, and changed faces, too, although his voice and the dangerous smile remained the same in all of his shapes. This time he kept his appearance as a white man, almost as tall as Ransom, and, while he looked leaner, Marta knew he was strong enough to carry a fallen jequitibá on his shoulders. He had short, well-cut silver hair that fell in a charming bang over one of his eyes. At that moment, he was dressed like a tourist, with well-cut linen pants and a short-sleeved button-up shirt. His dark brown eyes shone like daggers looking at the trio standing in front of him in the kitchen.

"Oncinha [4], you look even bigger than when we parted last month!" He sounded warm, like a normal dad, like someone who had no ulterior motives in visiting his children.

"That's usually how pregnancies go, Father." Alice answered him, slowly.

"How lovely!" König chimed. "My star! Look at you, you are all grown up. I missed you, baby girl, we shouldn't wait so long to see each other like that."

"Maybe if you don't disappear for the next 127 years we won't, Father." Marta answered carefully, but unable to bite back her resentment.

"Now, now, let's not delve in the past. What good can come to this? Especially..." He sniffed the air, and his smile grew bigger. "When we have such a nice guest for dinner. I don't know about you, but I'm positively ravenous, girls."

"He is Marta's mate, Father." It was Alice who argued with him. Marta didn't even know what to say, what was the safest course.

" _Marta_?" König [5] turned to his eldest, seeming dangerously entertained. "Haven't we taught you to not play with your food, child?"

Marta defiantly raised her chin and held Ransom's hand, trying to convey a courage she didn't feel. Ransom squeezed her hand one time. His hand was warm and steady against hers, like he didn't believe that König was going to really kill and eat him.

"It's as Alice said, Father, he's not dinner, he's my mate. If you're interested, I can make you dinner with the offerings my friends make to me..."

" _Your friends?_ Humans? Star, you sound just like your mother."

"Don't you _dare_ talk about our mother." Marta snarled. "Don't you dare come here after a century and act..."

"Act like what? Like your father? I have news for you, child, I'll always be your father and you will always be my child, like it or not." A clap of thunder rumbled loudly outside with König's voice. Such a beautiful voice. So much violence. Alice hissed and grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter, baring her teeth at him. She never cared much about being a good girl as Marta did. König laughed at her as if she was just a bratty child.

"Why are you here?" Alice asked. "We were doing well without you. You came just to fight?"

" _You_ gave me the idea to come to visit, oncinha!" König answered, almost surprised as if stating the obvious.

"Me?!" Alice exclaimed.

"Yes! When we reunited last month and your mate, Raoni -- great warrior, by the way -- was so pleasant and friendly towards me, I realized it had been rude and neglectful of me to not be more present to you both. I was discovering things about myself, and sometimes being a parent is too much, you will see it soon, my love. So I came back home." König stopped speaking for a moment, looking around and turned to Marta, before speaking again: "I really like what you did with the place, my star."

Marta squeezed Ransom's hand again, and her other hand went to his bicep, trying to keep her balance. Like the first time they walked side by side, Ransom's free hand went to her fingers to gently caress her.

"You… you will stay?" Marta asked, weakly.

König was absentmindedly studying the walls and the decorations. Marta felt queasy, her home didn't feel like hers anymore. She wanted to pack and run with Ransom as soon as possible.

"Not permanently, no. I will just stay for dinner and will be on my way later. I have businesses to attend to, my star. But we can catch up today, okay?"

"O-okay..." Marta mumbled.

"Alice, that's the name you're going by now, right?" König turned to his younger daughter, who kept breathing hard and standing in a defensive position. "There's no need to be so dramatic, child, you can put the knife down." Alice growled, low, and König chuckled. "Well, I'm going to the living room, I'll let you work on our meal, and I expect some wine to be served soon. Since the human is not a simple pet, but my new son, I invite him to come with me, so we can get to know each other."

Ransom looked at Marta, confused, and back at König. She gripped him even tighter.

"Promise you won't hurt him, and I will let him keep you company." Marta wished that her voice didn't tremble in that moment, but it did. König still had that power over her.

"I promise I won't harm your human, Meine Tochter."

"Not you and not your animals, Father." Marta pressed. Ransom's hand was sweaty then. Or perhaps the sweat was Marta's.

"No harm will come to a single hair on his head, _Marta_."

This made her sigh, relieved, and let go of Ransom's hand.

"I'll be in the living room. When you're ready to speak, boy, come, too, and bring wine for us." With those words, König left.

"I'm sorry." Marta whispered to Ransom.

"Listen, what are the odds of me dying today? Just give me a ballpark estimate, Marta."

"König told us you won't be harmed, so you won't be harmed, human." Alice interrupted, coming closer to him. "I still don't like you; but my sister chose you, so I'm on your side here. I also hate König more than I ever can hate you."

" _Alice!"_ Marta chastised her, and her sister rolled her eyes at her.

"Just to be sure, if it's ok for you guys, I would like to sleep here today. I'll talk to Raoni and ask them to come and join me, and König won't dare to do something against the three of us together."

"Alice, you're pregnant, should you be offering this kind of stuff?"

"Pregnancy is not a disease, Marta. Mother was born in battle, this child can be born in battle too, if needed. I would rather they were born in a cozy and safe place like this house, not literally this house, because now we know König… I ramble. The important thing is, human, do not give him your full name and do not trust him. He will try to charm you, but don't be fooled, he is the monster your parents warned you against."

"He… what?" Ransom turned to Marta, confused. "You've never mentioned anything like that."

"Alice is being dramatic. Father is… old. He is ancient. And he is selfish. And..."

"I'm not being dramatic. He is a monster. Nuance won't help you here. When he called you 'dinner,’ he meant it. Do not try to harm him, because this would break the laws of hospitality and make his promise to Marta void. He probably will try to trick you into doing something to justify killing you, just for fun. Or because he is bored. Or because he was curious about what could happen. Doesn't matter. Be polite and charming, as if your life depends on it. Because it does. Now I'll go to the pantry to find some food and wine and let you both talk for a moment before König gets impatient."

"You really shouldn't be calling Father by his name, Alice, you know how he gets angry with it."

"I won't call him like that to his face, but I would rather choke on my spit than keep pretending I care about his preferences when he is not around. Ok, you two have two minutes."

When Alice left, Marta turned to Ransom again.

"I'm sorry." She croaked.

"What the fuck, Marta?" Ransom bit back at her. "I thought he had left when Portugal still owned this country."

"Have you been studying?"

"This is so besides the point now. I'm dealing with, not one, but two, very deadly prospective in-laws, and I have to _entertain_ your father in the living room, so work with me here, ok?"

"Yes, yes, sorry." Marta tried not to get distracted by Ransom referring to her family as "in-laws" and focus on their problems at hand. "Alice barks but doesn't really bite, not when it comes to me. Father is a different story. He is really dangerous, Ransom. Everything Alice said is true. Do not mention Benoit nor Elliott to him. Do not mention the Solstice party. Do not mention our bond. Try not blatantly lie, because he tends to smell it. But don't tell the truth. You're good at it."

"Thank you, I guess." How he found the energy to be sarcastic was beyond Marta's comprehension.

Marta got on her tiptoes and kissed him. Ransom held her in place for three heartbeats.

"He will leave later, and we will be alright. It will be alright."

"You can't promise that." He whispered, bitterly, still holding her close to him.

"I'm not promising, but I have faith in you, us." Marta let her magic flow in her fingers through him, trying to make sure that she would be able to force König to keep his promise. "I don't care for what Father might think, I've never been as strong as I am when you're with me."

He kissed her brow and took a step back.

"We will make it work, my fairy."

Alice came back from the pantry with wine and cold meats. She pushed them on Ransom's arms and declared that she would be outside for a moment, calling for Raoni. Marta chuckled and explained to Ransom in a quiet whisper that her sister hated to cook and would probably only come back when it was time to eat. She arranged the appetizers and the wine glasses on a tray that would float to the living room with Ransom. He kissed her temple one last time before leaving the kitchen, and Marta couldn't move until she heard him and König laughing in the other room.

She worked as fast as she could to make the food ready. Marta knew König would be expecting a full meal, with appetizers, soup, a main dish, and dessert. Before anything else, she started working on the dessert. She would have to enchant it since there would be no time for the mousse to naturally chill, and she would have to use someone else's fridge since there was none in her house. Muttering to herself about how Ruth and Ransom would be glad to know that she wanted nothing more than electricity at that moment, Marta beat the heavy cream in a magically chilled bowl and sifted the passion fruit pulps in the air over the cream. The condensed milk came from Maya's pantry. When all the ingredients were mixed, Marta charmingly arranged the mousse inside the hulled passion fruit and its seeds over the dessert as decoration. She cast a quickly freezing spell in each one and left it to rest over the kitchen aisle.

Marta got a big pumpkin from her yard and carved it to make soup and serve the soup inside the hollowed-out pumpkin. She caramelized white onions and grated ginger, before throwing the pumpkin on the pot with sea salt and water. While the soup cooked, Marta turned her attention to making mushroom sauce for the Jägerschnitzel that would be their main dish. Luckily, her butcher had beautiful pork chops available that day, which she separated to make when the time came.

"I'm hungry, child!" König's inebriated voice came from the next door.

Marta hurried to the pot of soup, and, when she took the lid out, the content had disappeared. When she raised her head, feeling desperation taking over her limbs, she found Alice beside the kitchen aisle with a ladle on her hand, summoning plates and spoons from Marta's counters.

"You need to take a deep breath, sister. Right now you're too much like a capybara in front of a jaguar. You're not a capybara, you're not prey. This house is yours too." Alice's voice was calm and low, and this made Marta straighten her back and put her chin up in the air. "That's better, my little maned wolf [6]. Remember: do not let König know how much he scares you. He needs to know we aren't children anymore."

"Thanks, sister." She thanked her. Marta then realized how much she missed Alice. It was as if she had inherited all of the courage Marta needed to summon for herself again and again. Alice gave her a tight smile one last time and left, going to the living room.

Marta started coating the pork chops in the egg wash and flour, so distracted that she almost let everything fall, when Ransom's voice came from the door that connected the kitchen and the living room:

"Aren't you hungry too? You got up with the sunrise, and you have been working all day, aren't you tired?"

"What are you doing here?" She reprimanded him. "Father won't like..."

Ransom walked past her towards the pantry.

"I came to get more wine from your small cellar, no need to get anxious, Marta."

When he came back, Marta was observing the slices of pork chop dipping themselves in oil and banishing the smoke outside the window. Ransom snuck an arm around Marta and kissed her hair.

"Listen, I know I don't know the whole story, but whatever happened was over a hundred years ago. Before your sister came in there, we were having a good time. Your father is not my favorite person..." he stopped and corrected himself, "entity in the world, but he's not the boogeyman either. Finish up here and come join us, you will see everything will be alright, my dear fairy."

She looked up at Ransom's blue-green eyes and found that his smile didn't help her. He seemed relaxed and at ease, and maybe he was right. It _had_ been over a century. Maybe Marta was letting Alice's drama rub on her and was exaggerating. Why couldn't she enjoy this?

"He did threaten to eat you not even two hours ago, Ransom." She said, reminding him, but also herself.

Ransom shrugged.

"You also considered the possibility of eating me back in November. I'm coming to the conclusion that this is possibly a Fae thing like grand gestures when courting."

"I never really considered eating you." She protested, but he only laughed.

"Finish up here and come eat with us."

The small stars pulsing across the living room ceiling cast a faint glow over König, Ransom, and Alice when Marta entered the room with their plates. Marta had cleaned herself a little bit in the kitchen sink and changed from her overalls into a light yellow summer dress. She left her hair in the braid she made in the morning, when she left to tend to her gardens. 

König had enchanted her sofa, comfy chairs, and coffee table to become an imposing dinner table with four chairs. Ransom was laughing at something König had said, and Alice seemed to be biting the inside of her cheek, like she did when they were kids, while playing with her wine and making it twirl on her glass. Marta sat with them and made the huge pumpkin and the soup bowls go back to the kitchen by themselves.

"I'm glad to see that you are learning how to cook, daughter." König said, smiling at her.

Marta took a deep breath and remembered her conversation with Ransom in the kitchen and her decision to not overreact to the tiniest things. Her father would leave in a few hours, and everything would be as before.

"I'm happy to know the food is to your pleasing, Father." Marta answered, with a tight smile.

"Well, it could be better, but it's passable." König retorted in a condescending tone.

"I found it delicious, sister." Alice chimed in, way too gentle and perky.

"Of course you did, onça, I was never able to make you develop a civilized palate."

"Jägerschnitzel?" Ransom interrupted. "Have I told you about the semester I studied in Berlin during college, Marta?"

"Ah, you've been to Deutschland then, human." König commanded the attention back to him and started to retell one of his many tales about the many Dukes he saw rising and falling in the past, and how much he missed the smell of battlefields. "War, nowadays, has lost so much of its beauty."

"If you think that there is beauty in mangled corpses..." Marta mumbled between her teeth before she could think better.

"Why, yes, Marta, there's beauty and passion in the deepest horrors that humanity created. For someone who chose to name themselves after a war god, you sound way too much of a pacifist." König chewed on a mushroom before continuing. "But you have always been like this, too _soft_."

Before Marta could say anything else, Ransom petted her hand under the table and she remained silent. Ransom also kept boosting König's ego, calling him "Your Highness" and asking him questions about his many travels around the world.

Marta served the dessert; and König found flaws there too, complaining about the excessive sweetness of the dish, but he ate two servings nevertheless. After two glasses of Port wine, König said his goodbyes and disappeared under the moonlight.

"This was surprisingly… not terrible?" Marta said to Ransom, while they oversaw the dishes washing on the sink and putting themselves away in the cabinets. Ransom had taken a bag of cookies from Marta's pantry and was nibbling on one of them.

Alice had transformed Marta's furniture back to their previous shape and was currently sleeping in a hammock on the front porch with Raoni. Raoni didn't want to go in nor meet them that night; Alice explained that they weren't very fond of spending long periods of time in human form and interacting with people, so they were sleeping under Alice's hammock in their jaguar form.

"Well, we had a rough start, to be fair. And I'm very relieved to not have been turned into a meal. We should do this more often." He said with sarcasm dripping in his voice, waving the cookie around. "But your father is charming, Marta. I can see why you made friends with Harlan and why you keep me around." Ransom answered with a sly smile on his lips, leaning against the kitchen island. He was tired and drunk, his eyes were hooded when he looked at Marta. She was exhausted too, but she needed to take care of one last thing.

"If you want to see the sun again in human form, you _won't_ keep talking about this, Ransom." There was no seriousness in Marta's threat, however. Ransom laughed and walked towards her, lacing her waist on his arms.

"Aren't you way too fond of my… human form to turn me into a toad at this point?"

"I can turn you back when I need you." Her hands went to his hair to mess it, and she had an arched brow and a trickster smile.

"Oh, so that's it? I'll be just your plaything?"

"What makes you think that you aren't already my plaything?"

He kissed her and licked her lips. Marta opened her mouth to allow him in and found out that Ransom tasted like passion fruit and sweet wine, intoxicating her senses. Ransom pressed her against the kitchen counter, and his hands traveled over her back.

"You're the most high maintenance fairy I've ever been involved with in my life." He whispered between kisses on her neck. Marta laughed.

"Oh yeah? The others didn't have a deadly pack of relatives?"

"Nope. Just you." He gently bit her shoulder, and Marta sighed, roaming her hands over his shoulders. "Just you, to make me want to try so hard, Marta." Almost as a dirty joke, when he said the word "hard,” Ransom rubbed his growing erection against her hip. Marta bit back a moan, remembering that her sister and her partner were sleeping just outside the house.

She forced herself to push Ransom away from her, and, with his face on her hands, she gave a quick kiss on his lips.

"Before we continue this in the bedroom," Ransom jokingly made a pout upon listening to her words, and Marta had to resist the urge to kiss him again, "I need to take you with me to the basement."

"And why is that, my dear Bluebeard?"

Marta could feel her heart hammering against her ribs.

"I want to give you a fancy gift." She said.

"Why? It's not my birthday or anything." He made a funny intrigued face at her, exaggerating his eyebrows and the twist of his mouth.

"You know… It's… It's a Fae thing." Her face felt incredibly warm to say this out loud.

"A Fae thing to… Oh." He took a small step back from her when he understood. "You're saying that you're courting me?"

"Yes." She couldn't look at his face anymore and started fidgeting with the hem of her dress.

"Wait, we weren't courting all this time? What was all this? A test drive?" There was laughter in his voice, and Marta raised her head again.

"You thought we were courting already?"

"I can't emphasize enough to you how much I _don't_ understand fairy customs, can I?"

Marta started laughing.

"Oh my god, no. You, I mean, we..." She couldn't stop laughing. "Fairies can have affairs without any intent to commit, Ransom. We give gifts when we want to make things… official."

"Official as in 'boyfriend and girlfriend' or official as in 'engaged'? I know I've just met your father and that we have been visiting your godchild for a few weeks now, but I still don't understand, Marta."

"You can still leave if you want." Her voice faltered, and she was losing her courage. "And you don't have to accept my gift."

His hand went to her chin, and Ransom made Marta look into his eyes.

"Hey, that's none of what I said, Marta. Just answer my question, please."

"Official as in you could ask me to marry you if and when you wanted to. As in this is a possible road for us. It's customary that the one that gives the first gift is not the one that makes the proposal." [7]

"So you want me to ask you to marry me." He stated this very slowly, and Marta wanted the floor to swallow her whole. This was so much worse than when Mother made her give a gift to Bill, because now she cared about what would happen next.

"Not now! I mean, we can… We can court for a while. Exchange gifts. And… And do everything we have been doing. It's not, it's just..." Before she could tell him to forget it, Ransom interrupted her:

"Take me to the basement."

***

The basement was only accessible by a trapdoor behind the house. The chains keeping it closed curled on themselves like snakes when Marta touched the handle, and the door opened itself to her. For some weird reason, her stomach was in knots over going inside the basement, although she had been there several times before, even by herself.

She was glowing in soft tones of pink, and her light reflected on the piles and piles of jewels and gold hidden in there.

Weapons from the most diverse places in the world were hanging on the walls. The weirdest display of all was a sculpture of knives, hatchets, swords, and other cutting instruments arranged in a bizarre halo behind a throne-like chair that her father built for himself in immemorial times. The room had trunks and trunks filled with maps to different treasures scattered all over the world, delicate silks and velours, and original paintings by the masters of the world.

"Wow, Marta… This is..." Ransom was in shock trying to look at everything. This would be the greatest test of their relationship. Marta could see the greediness in his eyes looking at every single thing. He then laughed and ran a hand on his face. "Now I get why you care so little about Harlan's money. But you make even less sense to me. You could live like a queen with all of that, and you choose not to?"

"Most of what's here is not rightfully mine, Ransom. Nor yours."

He waved his head in agreement and almost immediately got distracted.

"Is this the spindle you were talking about?"

In the middle of the room was the said spindle. The only object made of iron in that house was the distaff in it. Father explained that they could never ever prickle themselves there or else they would die immediately. This was part of the reason why Marta avoided the basement.

"Yes. This is half of the reason we are here. I'm going to make a small golden chain for you to wear with your amulet of protection."

"This doesn't sound like a very fancy gift when we compare with what you have here. Can't you make significant quantities of gold in this?"

Marta laughed, shaking her head and walking to the bench near the spindle.

"Let me put it this way, Ransom, if you can guess my name, I'll give you _anything_ your bratty heart wishes for. Anything."

"Isn't your name Marta?"

"I've never told you that. And my father stated very clearly today that I chose to call myself Marta." She was gathering a bunch of straw on the floor and started working.

"A Cabrera?" He asked, tentatively. Marta laughed louder, adjusting the new threads of gold on her fingers and calculating how much more she would need.

"Do you think that, if my name was something that everyone knows, I would have any power left, Ransom?"

He hugged her from behind and kissed her neck before whispering:

"Do you want me to propose marriage to someone whose name I don't even know?"

"Well, that's a very good question for you to sort out, don't you think?"

"You want me to work for it, then?"

"If you know my name when you decide to ask me to marry you, then I would have no choice but to say yes. Like I said, just tell me my name and I'll give you anything. Even a dumb request like spinning gold."

"Fine."

Marta got up, and the gold threads started to form a chain in the air. She put her hand in Ransom's breast pocket and took out the amulet she had made almost a month before for him.

"A toad." He said, laughing a little.

"A toad for my toad." She answered with tenderness in her voice. "But this is not your gift."

"Oh no?"

"No. This is for your protection and my peace of mind. What I wanted to be your gift is..." She waved her hand, and one of the trunks opened. A small box came floating. It was made of wood carved in various small drawings. The box stayed suspended in the air until Ransom held it in his hands. "This."

"A box?"

"We have established already that you are not dumb. Open the box, Ransom."

Inside it, there was a golden pocket watch in a small chain. He raised it to his eyes, studying it under Marta's light.

"It belonged to Alberto Santos Dumont, a Brazilian inventor, and the first human to fly an airplane in Paris, at the beginning of the 20th century. [7] It's not just a watch. If you press it here..." She pressed a button on the side of the watch, and it popped open. "It's also a compass." Ransom stayed in silence, and Marta started to get anxious. "I thought you would like it, because it's rare and priceless; you will be able to see in the morning the inscription in the case with his name, and you like to travel so..."

"It's beautiful." He said, finally. "It's broken, but it's beautiful."

"Broken?" Marta was confused. "What do you mean?"

"The watch is not working, and the compass is not pointing North."

"Ah. The watch just needs to be winded." Marta touched it, and it started to tick again. "You will need to adjust the time, though."

"The compass is still not pointing North." He mumbled. The compass's nail was, indeed, moving nonstop.

"I trust you will figure this out on your own." Marta kissed the corner of his mouth, and Ransom put the compass and the amulet inside the box and closed it. "You need to wear the amulet, Ransom." Marta complained.

"I will, starting tomorrow. Right now I want to do things with you that will probably make the chain get really tangled."

He kissed her again, with the same energy he had in the kitchen. Marta kissed him back, feeling her head get dizzy.

"Let's go to the bedroom, Marta."

***

She took a quick shower before joining Ransom in the bedroom, while he put his gifts away. When she got into the bedroom, he was already naked and sitting on the bed. The curtains had been drawn over the glass doors, and, before Marta entered the room, the only source of light was from a candle he had lit on the bedside table.

"Eager, aren't we?" She repeated his words to him, closing the door behind her and taking off her dress.

Her hair was wet and smelled like chamomile flowers, and her skin was soft and supple with her milk and honey lotion. Ransom grabbed her by her wrist, and she fell seated on his lap.

"Call me shallow, but being courted by an obscenely rich fairy made me very horny." His hands were on her hips, kneading her muscles, and his mouth went to hers, wet and demanding.

Marta's hands traveled through his strong arms -- she could never get tired of this -- and she kissed him back fiercely. Then she playfully bit his ear, and she licked and suckled on his earlobe.

"If I knew it would grant me perks in bed, I would have taken you to the basement earlier, meu bem." [9]

She wiggled her hips on his lap, adjusting his hardening cock between their bellies, and started to move with intent, coating him with her slick and using him almost as a dildo to her pleasure. Ransom adjusted his arms on her back and sighed with her movements and kisses.

"I think I'm not the only one who's really into this, fairy." He tried to joke, but his voice was breathless.

Marta didn't answer, she was busy chasing her orgasm. Ransom held her by her waist and brought her breasts close to his face, sucking one of them, while he fondled and pinched the other. This made Marta start moaning, and she had to bite two of her fingers to try to shush herself a little. This time they couldn't be loud. As if trying to test her, Ransom increased his efforts on her nipple with his mouth and slid one of his hands to her clit. A shiver ran through Marta's whole body, and her climax blew off the candle they had forgotten about. She didn't stop moving, and, with a small change of angle on her hips, Ransom's cock slid inside her all at once. Marta orgasmed again; when he started dragging himself inside her, she kept riding wave after wave of pleasure, supporting herself on his shoulders, with her mouth clamped on the skin of his neck muffling her cries. He was still rubbing her with the tip of his thumb, but his movements got more and more erratic until he stopped; he just held her with both hands on her ass while fucking her in a punishing pace. Marta squeezed him inside her with her walls, in the middle of one of her orgasms, and Ransom let out a strangled sound. He stayed very still for a moment, spilling himself inside her. Marta could feel her whole body going limp.

They just slid onto the bed, still a mess of limbs and fluids, to properly lie down. Ransom was lying on his back, and Marta laid on top of him, completely spent. After a moment or two, she heard his breath getting even. She was almost asleep too, it had been a long day, but something made her mumble: "I love you" before succumbing to unconsciousness.

  
***

Alice wailed behind her, and her tiny arms were around Marta's waist. Marta was kneeling in front of her with her arms opened, and a faint glow lit the room. The living room had almost no furniture, and, instead of chairs, straw mats shared the space with beautiful rugs on the floor.

" _Kill me first_ " she thought, but she didn't say it out loud because she didn't really want to die. She just wouldn't bear seeing Alice die, " _Kill me first, so I won't hear the sound her blood will make when you slice her throat.”_

"Daddy, no!" Alice screamed, her voice was shrill in the middle of her sobs. "Daddy, please stop, we will be good!"

König was in front of them; he held a long obsidian knife in his right hand, and his face was perfectly calm. He had tried to bewitch the children to lie down on the floor in sacrificial gowns, while he lit the fireplace and put a cauldron with water on the fire. Marta was not yet one hundred years old. Grandmother had died, and Mother had gone by herself to a town nearby to help the villagers with a serious case of flu. Father promised that he would watch the children in her absence. A few weeks before, Marta had started glowing, and she would leave a trail of flowers in her path. Alice was still small, but more and more forest animals would come near her to play. Father watched them with what Marta first thought was pride.

Later she would know to name it "greed.”

"Daddy!" Alice screamed again, holding Marta tighter. Marta wasn't crying, she couldn't cry when her eyes went from his knife to his hungry eyes.

"If you stay very quiet, oncinha, it won't hurt a thing. Daddy will make it quick. Come on, baby star, you're a big girl, help daddy make your sister calmer."

"No." Was the first word Marta said to him. He seemed to get angry.

"Kaaru [10], stop playing games with your father now, or you will be very sorry."

"No." She repeated herself. She was getting tired, but she knew she couldn't lower her arms and her defenses, not until momma came home.

" _Kaaru!_ " His voice was stronger now, and a clap of thunder rumbled very close. Alice yelped behind Marta, and Marta could feel her whole body shaking with fear. She wouldn't last much longer.

" _Kill me first, kill me first, kill me first_ " was the only reasoning in her mind. Maybe she could give him serious indigestion, and he wouldn't be able to eat her baby sister too. He would eat them, Marta knew he would.

"Mommy!" Alice cried out, and this was the warning that made König turn on his back.

Bartira [11] was on the house's doorstep, sweaty and breathless like she had been running for a while, looking at the scene in front of her in complete disbelief.

"Mommy!" Alice cried again, her voice hoarse and broken with her screams.

"What's happening here, my love?" Bartira asked, her voice shaking as much as she was in that moment.

"I was going to teach the girls how to read omens in a rabbit's gut, and Andraste started to throw a fit, my wife." König's voice, on the other hand, didn't falter.

"He's lying!" Marta screamed. König turned to her, still holding the knife in a threatening manner.

"Shut up, girl!" Bartira snapped at her before König could say anything. Marta felt so betrayed by that. How could Mother not even want to hear her? This made Father give the girls one of his dangerous smiles and turn to his wife. "Did these imps scare the rabbit with their screams, my love?" Mother's voice dripped like honey and cut like poison.

"Yes, exactly." König agreed.

"You're ten times the hunter I'll ever be, my love. Why don't you go outside to fetch another rabbit for our dinner while I restrain them? Maybe it's something better dealt with by a mother's touch." Bartira was smiling like they were talking about picking flowers for a picnic.

"So you know, wife?" König asked, dangerous.

"I'm not blind, you know." Bartira came closer to him, ignoring his knife, and caressing his chest with her fingers. "All this raw power wasted in annoying children. If we had done this before, maybe we would have won that battle, and my mother would be alive now." 

"Your mother would have done the same thing."

"Exactly." She kissed him long and slow. "But, since you touched on the subject of rabbits, I crave one for dinner, after the children. You scared them too much, go out, and I'll set everything for us to pick up from where you were."

König kissed her again.

"You're perfect for me. I promise you we will have more children."

And he handed Bartira the knife. Marta suddenly knew what her mother was going to do. She grabbed Alice by her wrist and prompted her to get on her knees too. She would drag Alice behind her.

"Run!" Mother screamed, plunging the knife in König.

  
  


***

Marta woke up breathless from the nightmare. The first thing she realized was that she was shining like never before, and the room was clear as day. The second was that Ransom was kneeling on the bed on top of her with a knife in his hands. In that moment, she realized that he stole it from the basement, when they were there earlier.

He stabs her in the gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Jenipapo and urucum are plants native to the Tropical Forests of South America that Native Americans use to make paints. Jenipapo is used to extract a black pigment and urucum a red/orange one. Painting the body to indigenous peoples of Brazil has multiple functions. Not only it is about beauty and the cultural equivalent of makeup, but also can be used to signal the nation and the tribe to which an individual is a part of; their gender (there's more than two!); their age; their marital status; their social role (farmer, shaman, warrior, artisan...); and many other things. Usually, the act of painting someone is an act of intimacy and care, and families like to spend hours and hours painting each other sometimes just for the pleasure of it. Alice would be painted signaling that she's a hunter/warrior spirit and not a person, the animal that is her symbol and she turns into, that she has a partner but isn't married, and that she is pregnant.  
> [2] Raoni is a gender-neutral Native name and means, quite literally, "onça" (jaguar). Alice's Raoni is a nonbinary spirit that uses the pronouns "they/them".  
> [3] Andraste was the name of a warrior goddess in the Illiad that comes to help the Amazons  
> [4] Burying the umbilical cord of a child is a technique used by some traditional societies to create a magical connection with the land. It's similar to the symbolic power that a burial ground has. Here, I take the magic literally.  
> [5] Oncinha - the endeared diminutive of "onça" (jaguar)  
> [6] König is literally King in German  
> [7] Capybaras are adorable rodents native from the tropical forests in South America. Maned wolfs are beautiful and shy canines natives from the Brazilian savanna (the "Cerrado" region), they look a lot like foxes.  
> [8] This was inspired by some costumes from Brazilian indigenous nations. Although, the ones that I know are in very binary societies and there are roles for the women and roles for the men in this. The women are, by costume, the ones to first show interest by asking their grandmothers to make a meal to the one they want to marry. The woman then takes the meal her grandmother made to the door of the man's house. If the man eats the dish, they're courting and he needs to give her some gifts, she needs to give other gifts until the elders of the tribe decide on the dowry and they marry.  
> [9] I can hear the estadunidenses protesting and claiming for the Wright's brothers the title of "inventors of the airplane". To them, I just want to say: catapulting an airplane is not the same as making it fly by itself and this title belongs to Santos Dumont.  
> [10] "Meu bem" can be translated as "my dear", but it doesn't have the same meaning. "My dear" as a less intimate term is "meu caro". "Meu bem" is closer to "my love", because it's actually the short version of "meu bem querer", in other words, "the one that embodies my feeling of tenderness".  
> [11] "Kaaru" is part of Marta's real name and it means "Star" in Guarani. All of her Fae nicknames are just translations to her first name.  
> [12] Bartira or Potira mean "Flower" in Guarani and is the name of the main character in a Native legend of a woman that didn't cry when her husband left her. Then she dies of sorrow after he leaves.


	10. My ghosts are not gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A high pitched sound pierced through his ears, drowning all of the other noises.
> 
> "Hugh? Hugh, can you hear me?" A voice with a ridiculously strong accent came from where Linda was before. "Hugh, where are you?"
> 
> "I'm here" a soft voice that he never heard before came in his head with a whiff of the smell of honey and wildflowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I broke my own rule and this chapter is not named after a Brazilian song. This is a line of the song ["Ghosts"](https://open.spotify.com/track/25aGf0NIelrAsbRAE6GbWx), by Ibeyi. They're a band created by French-Cuban twins and their songs have a lot of Latin American and Caribbean elements. This song portrays so much the following chapter that it inspired me to create [a playlist for it.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5RDLNH6BZwUFtSmthQ5sbQ)  
> This chapter will have a lot of Angst. Content Warning: it will have scenes in a mental hospital and a character has been diagnosed with a psychotic break. If this triggers you, I recommend jumping to the part that begins with "A day before leaving,". But this path will make you lose major plot points. There will be a Happy Ever After in the end, I promise, and I don't show any explicit scenes of the mental breakdown. So it's up to you to decide. There will be here and on the next chapters, scenes of Ransom in therapy. It's under a positive light.  
> Another content warning: Harlan died of cancer. Ransom remembers a little bit about his passing during this chapter. I don't go into the details of the disease either. But, if cancer is a sensitive topic to you, proceed with caution.

He feels like there's cotton in his mouth. A horrible smell of ether is barely disguised by the smell of his sheets. There's a constant beeping somewhere in the room. His eyes weigh too much to open but his throat is dry, and he needs to say:

"Water."

Linda is there, sleeping on a pull-out couch, and she jumps from it to fetch a glass and puts a straw on his mouth. She has dark circles under her eyes and looks older than the last time Ransom saw her. When was it? October. His birthday. His eyes feel too heavy.

***

There's so much light in the room. He raises a hand to cover his eyes and sees a square of tape connected to a tube on it. The smell of ether that always makes him gag is still there. A hospital room. Empty. Linda was there, wasn't she? He sits up on the bed, his whole body feeling weak, and he's still tired. While he's looking around and trying to understand where he is -- there's something written in a weird Spanish on the wall -- someone opens the door to the room.

"Ransom…?" He turns around to look at the familiar voice.

"Mom?" It has been years since he'd said that word; he doesn't really know what compels him to say it in that moment but it slips out before he can think it better.

This makes Linda sob, and she runs towards him, lacing her arms around his neck.

"Are you feeling like yourself again, dear?" She asks with her head burrowed into his shoulder.

"What do you mean?" He was patting her head softly because he had no idea how to respond to this demonstration of fragility from her. Linda disentangled herself from him and pushed her glasses back to the top of her nose, looking almost like the strong Linda Thrombey that Ransom always associated her with.

"What's the last thing you remember, Ransom?"

He furrowed his brow, confused. What _was_ the last thing he remembered? He remembered Harlan dying. How the cancer dragged for months. How, in the end, he didn't even have the strength to fight with Ransom anymore. And Ransom couldn't have the heart to do it anyway. He remembered Linda moving into the manor, and Meg almost living there too. The army of nurses and doctors going in and out of the house, all faceless. Linda made Ransom go visit him at least once a month. He hated it. He avoided it. What was the point in having all of those horrible memories of his grandfather with him for the rest of his life? In the end, Harlan was delirious with morphine, and he would talk about his days in Brazil and some woman that he met there. Ransom never paid much mind to it. He also talked about a surprise for Ransom in the will, how he would have to prove himself worthy of his share. Even on his deathbed, Harlan still was a control freak. He was exhausted, this was all exhausting. Ransom would pray, if he believed in a god, to any god to take Harlan at once. He fantasized more than once about taking matters in his own hands. There were way too many people around Harlan all the time for it to be viable, but that didn't stop Ransom from daydreaming with stopping his pain himself. A syringe filled with air to his morphine access. An overdose with morphine. Smothering him with a pillow.

He remembered the quizzical will that left almost everything to Ransom if he did a self-discovering journey to Brazil too. The way how the family almost imploded itself with it. Meg screamed that he didn't even care about Harlan and how this wasn't fair -- even if she got a generous trust fund, to be managed by a legal auditor until she turned 35, same as Jacob. Ransom was 29, but no auditors were deemed necessary to control his money. It's not like he was as insane as his family liked to think that he was, ever since the fiasco with being almost arrested on Harlan's 70th birthday, when he was only nineteen. Still, requiring no auditors was a weird move on Harlan's part.

He also remembered his bleak 30th birthday, with Linda insisting on him going to the manor and celebrating with her and grandnana. She was already separated from Richard by October; part of Harlan's final shenanigans was a secret letter that guided her to a file on his son-in-law, with evidence on his cheating collected by a P.I. paid by Harlan for months. It's not like a single person in that family was even remotely normal, especially not Harlan, but Ransom was the only one deemed as "an asshole.” Whatever. He didn't need them. He didn't want them. Maybe he wanted Linda to still like him. And grandnana, too. Maybe he missed Harlan. Traveling would be good for him.

"The airport. I remember boarding the plane in Boston and then… nothing. Where are we?"

She pursed her lips, anguished.

"We are in Rio, dear. You came to Brazil as your grandfather asked you to."

"I… Did something happen on the plane? I collapsed or something? How long was I out?"

"Nothing happened on the plane as far as the detective I hired was able to gather. You got out of the plane, rented a car at the airport, and that was the last anyone could trace you. Your car's GPS didn't record a single mile traveled from leaving the airport to where it was found last week near the road that leads to the Christ, with your packed bags in it. Nothing was stolen, and that baffles the local police."

"I have been out for a week?" He asked, feeling more confused. Linda eyed the bags of saline that were hanging over Ransom's head for a moment; he turned to look too, but she spoke again.

"Ransom… It's New Year's Day."

"What?"

She took her phone from her pocket and showed him the lock screen. It read "January 1st of 2013.” Ransom suddenly felt queasy.

"You're shitting me."

"Do you want me to call the nurse, dear? Maybe the psychiatrist? You were calmer after he talked with you last time."

"Last… time?" The world was spinning around him, and he couldn't look at Linda anymore. A cold feeling washed over his body, and his breath felt short. How did he lose two months of his life? What was going on? He could hear Linda moving somewhere on his left. He could feel the sun coming through the window, touching his skin on his right. A high-pitched sound pierced through his ears, drowning all of the other noises.

"Hugh? Hugh, can you hear me?" A voice with a ridiculously strong accent came from where Linda was before. "Hugh, where are you?"

_"I'm here,"_ a soft voice that he never heard before came in his head with a whiff of the smell of honey and wildflowers.

"Hugh, can you hear me?" The voice insisted, and Ransom looked towards him. He was an old man, looked almost white if it wasn't for his strong Chicano accent. He was probably in his sixties and had a grey beard that matched his hair. "Look into my eyes, can you?" His eyes were behind thick glasses. "Are you here with us?"

_"I'm here,"_ she whispered again. Ransom tried to shake that voice away and focus on the doctor in front of him.

"I'm… I'm here. It's just… a lot to process. Who are you?"

"I'm Doctor Eduardo Cardoso. I have been taking care of your case since you were transferred here, four days ago. It's perfectly fine to not remember me; the last times we have met you were really agitated."

"Four days since I'm here. Where is 'here' and where was I before?"

Linda was still nowhere to be seen. _Agitated_. Maybe that tropical hell had turned him into a dangerous person.

"We are at the Clínica Psiquiátrica Marilene Silvestre, a private psychiatric facility, at Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I've been informed that your mother told you the date."

"Yes. I'm in a loony bin, then. I'm insane now, that's what you're telling me." Ransom tried -- and failed —to conceal the disgust in his voice. 

"Now, now. I don't like to use such terms in my practice, and, from what I gather, you suffered a grave traumatic event some point in the past couple months and have been having a hard time to process whatever you lived, and that's ok. Here is a safe space to deal with your feelings." The older man tried to give him a reassuring smile, but that made Ransom queasier.

"I think I'll throw up."

The doctor went to the door, opened it, and talked with someone on the other side in that Spanish that Ransom couldn't understand:

"Eliana, você pode pegar um balde e um copo com gelo para o meu paciente, por favor? Obrigado, você é uma querida." [1] He came back into the room and put a small bucket on Ransom's lap and a plastic cup filled with ice chips into his hand. "Chew on this, it will make you feel better. You were found wandering the Tijuca Forest on Christmas Day. People are considering this a Christmas miracle."

"There are no such thing as miracles." He muttered, bitterly.

"That's a valid point of view in life. A dark one, nevertheless." The doctor pulled a chair from the corner of the room and sat on it. "But, having in mind that you have been considered officially missing since November 22, after twenty days with no contact with anyone from your family, friends, or your legal team, and no one could find a shred of evidence pointing out where you could have been all this time, it's understandable that people are moved with the coincidence."

"No ransom request was made?" The sheer irony of his name wasn't forgotten by him. But the doctor didn't react to it.

"No. And, since your personal possessions were left untouched, the police are not really working with a kidnapping hypothesis."

He reclined on the bed and looked at the ceiling, annoyed with the fog that clogged his mind.

"And what is the _muy eficiente policia del_ Rio de Janeiro working with?"

"Considering that your tox screen came negative for every possible substance, except the antipsychotics that you were given at Souza Aguiar [2], I informed them that you probably witnessed something tragic or violent during your trip, and this led to a psychotic break that made you get lost in the woods."

They talked more for almost an hour, and the doctor left. Ransom was tired and hungry. He could feel the short beard on his own face. Linda walked back in, and he told her that he could eat a burger. She went to the hallway and chatted with some nurse or something, asking for help to get a burger delivered to their room, with fries and a milkshake. She came back to the room and had to leave almost immediately to take a phone call, leaving Ransom alone with his thoughts.

Linda avoided him for most of the time that he was in the clinic, almost as if he was an annoying child in the way of her career again. He was discharged on January 3rd, with a prescription for anxiety pills and a recommendation to seek a permanent psychiatrist when going back to Boston — which Ransom fully intended to ignore.

A day before leaving, Ransom got his phone back. Some weird malfunction had happened with it on his first day in Brazil, and the hardware had been completely erased. He was able to reprogram it and see that he had dozens of lost texts and unanswered emails. One of the most recent group chats he was added to against his will was created by an old friend from college. He had made plans with Ransom and their old lacrosse team about a New Year's Eve party on a private island in Paraty [3]. They would all arrive at the island on December 28th and stay until January 10th. Some of them were concerned for a full day about Ransom's disappearance when Linda made an official statement to the press, in late November. Someone thought it would be a nice homage to get one of his old pictures from their parties in college and make some sort of shrine on the island. Bart Allen, the fifth of them, thought it would be even more touching if he took pictures of the shrine and uploaded them in the Facebook group for their Yale class. Jenny commented on it, pointing out that it was tactless and disrespectful, and they should be embarrassed of themselves.

Jenny Wilkins... It had been a while since Ransom thought of her. He opened her Facebook profile and found out that she had gone to Harvard Law and now worked for a high profile Republican politician in Washington. She was also married and had two kids. _Two kids_ , at 30 years of age? What a waste of time. He spent almost all of January 3rd looking at the posts about his disappearance and the comments on them. It was almost as if he could go to his own funeral. What an unsettling and hypnotizing experience.

Meg had gone all out. She made several montages of them as kids and a heartfelt short film about Ransom's life and the _one_ short story he had published, by Harlan's insistence. Meg went on and on about his wasted potential and "how much he would be missed.” He couldn't stop himself from laughing and thinking that, once more, his adorable cousin hadn't disappointed him. It's not that Meg wouldn't wait for his body to go cold before dancing on his grave; Meg wouldn't even wait for his body to show up before declaring him dead. Ransom couldn't help but like all of Meg's posts and share them, publicly praising her for her delicate work on grief. Since he was feeling petty and bored, he decided to dust out a bit his barely earned Lit major, adding that he was as happy as Odysseus finally arriving in Ithaca after ten years lost on the sea [4].

The city was completely jammed with a storm worthy of Biblical proportions. The heat wasn't even a little bit decreased by it, making the air feel like the steam from a plate of boiling soup. He only walked a few steps without AC between the hall of the clinic and the back of the town car that Linda had called to take them to the airport. Those few steps under the hot summer shower were enough to make him decide that he hated that town. You couldn't see a single thing outside the window with the water curtain surrounding them, and they stayed over three hours in the traffic between the clinic and the Galeão [5]. The path began with what would be a beautiful sight of the famous Rio de Janeiro beaches, blurred by the water, and got uglier and uglier the closer they got to the airport. A "favela", the driver explained, surrounded the freeway with tens of thousands of people living in it.

"Tipo Ci-da-de-de-De-us, ya know?" He spoke in a horrible English, half screaming, as if raising his voice would make Linda and Ransom understand him better. "But Cidade de Deus is other, ya know? Other favela. It here is Maré. Feio mesmo, horrible, dona Linda." [6] He mistook Linda's non-committal sounds for a conversation and proceeded to talk about football, telling that he was Vasco with pride -- whatever that meant -- and asking if she was a Real Madrid or a Barcelona fan. That's when Ransom understood that he was talking about soccer. Linda answered that she didn't like sports, and he turned to Ransom, who answered "Real Madrid", without really caring. The guy kept talking with little to no encouragement throughout the whole drive. That made Ransom take his first emergency anxiety pill and feel blessed when the lull of the car, the sound of the rain, and the effect of the medication made him fall asleep.

He dreamed of a room that smelled like rain and flowers. There was a woman on the bed with him, he had his head on her lap and his eyes closed. She was singing words that he could barely understand while running her hands through his hair:

"Se essa rua, se essa rua fosse minha… Eu mandava, eu mandava ladrilhar… Com pedrinhas, com pedrinhas de brilhantes… Para o meu, para o meu amor passar..." Her voice mixed with the driver in real life, and he just didn't want to wake up; so he tried harder to dream. Her voice came further away: "Nessa rua, nessa rua tem um bosque… Que se chama, que se chama solidão..." [7]

"Ransom, dear," he could hear Linda calling him, and he couldn't feel her fingers on his hair anymore. He focused on the voice:

"Dentro dele, dentro dele mora um anjo… Que roubou, que roubou meu coração." [7]

"Ransom, wake up. We are at the airport." Linda was shaking his shoulder, and the woman and her song vanished completely. The rain didn't smell like flowers anymore, but, instead, it had the pungent odor of flooded sewers. Luckily, they only had to walk a few steps under the relentless summer heat again, entering the airport's chilled lobby. The boarding gate was massive, with dozens of people running from one side to the other carrying their luggage. They checked their bags and boarded the plane in no time. When they were seated in First Class and had strapped their belts, Linda turned to him and asked:

"Ransom, who is Marta? She was all you asked about on your first days after being rescued." When Ransom heard his mother saying that name, he knew that he should feel something but he didn't.

"I have no idea. I don't know anyone with this name."

***

Linda insisted that he should stay with her in the Manor for a little while, and he refused. She kept paying a maid to tidy his place while he was away, so, why should he be cramped up with his mommy? He could see she was contrary to his position, but Ransom also knew that she would quickly regret her generosity. In the three days he had been awake at the clinic, Linda was already uninterested in participating in his recovery more than what the doctors demanded of her and would spend most of her time on her phone.

So Ransom spared them both of the trouble and went straight to his place. There was a weird feeling of angst about being surrounded by snow-covered woods. Ransom always loved the chilly winter air and the monotonous view of the white snow, so this was new to him. He had been found wandering in the jungle, maybe this weird feeling was part of his memory trying to come back.

"It's just saudade, Ransom." A woman's voice came from the kitchen, he heard the sound of clattering pans and opening his drawers. He could hear her barefooted steps on the floor. He took his cell phone out of his pocket, ready to call the police. But he just had to ask her:

"Saudade?"

"There's not really a translation to it. It's missing something or someone. But, like, in a way that twists your heart and hurts so good… A little bit missing, some drops of nostalgia, a pinch of yearning. Saudade."

He circled the column ready to fight the intruder that, somehow, knew his name. The kitchen was empty.

He looked in every single corner of the house. He was alone.

  
  


***

Undoing his luggage made him feel weak for days, like he was coming down with a cold. There was a small wooden box in his stuff that he just couldn't even bear to look at, so he left it at the bottom of the suitcase. He tried to look for answers in Harlan's journals. There should be something there. There was something there that made him know he should go to Rio, he remembered that much.

After days of reading Harlan's journals, Ransom came to the conclusion that they were useless. His ship stopped at major ports in different countries, starting in Mexico and then passing by Central and South America on the way to the South Pole. Harlan's goal was to find his inspiration to write his great American novel. When the ship stopped in Rio, he intended to just stroll around the city, but he encountered the city taken by the Carnival and got lost in the party. Harlan's description of the city was rich, and the parties he went to sounded amazing; but this didn't help Ransom. What was in there that convinced him to go straight to Rio instead of recreating Harlan's journey as a whole? There were pictures in black and white of men and women in costumes and masks, throwing confetti, and doing drugs in stone-paved streets. Then Harlan decided to hitchhike his way to the Maldives, and his descriptions of the countryside of Brazil got more and more boring. For unexplained reasons, he stayed for almost four years on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Probably nothing happened there, because that's when Harlan stopped narrating his daily life and started to write short stories. There were horrible drawings of animals and plants there, too. And, apparently, his camera was broken for a while, because, of those four years, there was only one picture of a girl with a summer dress and a straw hat. The sun was behind her, and you could only see her silhouette. No name scribbled on the picture, just a date: December 21st of 1963. It should be the summer solstice there. Ransom stopped and looked at the wall of his office, thinking about why he knew this impromptu information about pagan holidays in the Southern Hemisphere. Probably something from his college days. Back then, he found out that his hungover brain could retain a surprising amount of information without meaning to.

He went to the Thrombey Manor once a week to visit Linda and also to look at Harlan's books, trying to find some sort of hidden clue. He had a nagging feeling that he would find his answers there. The inscriptions read "to my wife and children" or "to my family" in every single one of them, as they always did. It felt off.

  
  


***

Ransom eventually caved in and looked for a psychiatrist when it became obvious that he wasn't going to be able to properly sleep again anytime soon. Linda told him that one of her friends had recommended the work of Dr. Benchimol as soon as they arrived in the country. Ransom looked her up online, and she seemed interesting. Dr. Gabriela Benchimol had been born in Argentina in the late 1950s and moved to France in 1979 [8], where she finished her psychiatric residency and apparently met her husband -- Dr. Joshua Cohen, dual citizen of the U.S. and France -- moving with him to America at some point in the early 1990s. He was a professor at Yale, and she had this private practice with exorbitant rates that, apparently, financed her work with refugees.

She had published a lot of papers about the impacts of State violence in families that suffered this kind of trauma. She also wrote a lot about how compulsory commitment to psychiatric facilities should be considered a crime against humanity, as well as how it derailed the treatment of people who desperately needed autonomy and control of their own lives.

Feeling confident that she wouldn't lock him up, even if she eventually thought that he was insane, Ransom scheduled an appointment with her for early February.

  
  


***

Her office was in a clinic in a quiet neighborhood in Boston. The clinic was a small house surrounded by a big yard that would probably be a garden by the spring. In the middle of the winter, it was just a patch of depressing mud with stripped-off trees. Ransom was greeted in the waiting room by a receptionist with a kind smile, who also told him that there was a tray available in the hallway with hot cocoa and tea if he wanted to warm up. He was pouring himself some tea and noticed that no interior decorator worked in that clinic -- its walls filled by mismatched paintings -- when a voice behind him caught his attention.

"Good morning. Fatima informed me that you're my ten o'clock." She had a strong accent, but a fluid way of speaking the words; when Ransom turned around, he found out that Dr. Benchimol was a tiny woman with piercing blue eyes and an intelligent smile.

"Yes, I'm Ransom Drysdale. Pleased to meet you, Dr. Benchimol." He offered his hand to her, and she took it, shaking it with both of her firm hands.

Her office was a small room on the second floor of the clinic. It had an armchair, in which the doctor sat, a large couch, and a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs. Ransom stood for a moment, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do.

"Is this the part where I lay on the couch and you ask me about my mother?" He asked with a joking tone in his voice to hide the anxiety he was feeling.

"Is that something you want to do right now?" She asked with an unreadable face.

"I don't know. No? I guess." He nervously sat on the couch, really close to the door and away from her. "The only time I did this, the psychiatrist would sit on a chair by my hospital bed."

"Have you been in the hospital?"

"Yes. Uhm… That's why I'm here. I had a mental breakdown in December, now I can't sleep, and I think I'm going insane."

She rested her head on her hand, looking at him with polite curiosity.

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"On what?" Ransom asked, defensively.

"Well, there is a lot of information in that sentence, so if you could break it down in pieces for me, it would be very welcome."

She let Ransom stay in silence, fidgeting with his fingers. He understood what she meant, he just didn't know if he wanted to say anything else.

"My grandfather died last July." He started there. Dr. Benchimol made no sound. "You probably have heard of him, he was Harlan Thrombey." He raised his head to see her reaction. Her face was unreadable. Ransom stayed in silence again. He let out a nervous laugh and ran his hand on his neck, trying to think what to say next. "He left almost everything to me with the sole condition that I re-enacted his travel through South America. So I left first thing in November, after my birthday, and..."

Another long beat of silence.

"And the next thing I know, it's New Year's Day, and I'm waking up in a psychiatric facility in Rio de Janeiro. I lost two months of my life; right now I'm in the middle of a judicial battle against my uncle, who is fighting the will in court, and I can't sleep."

"And why do you think that is?" Dr. Benchimol finally said, in a soft voice.

"Because, honestly, the will doesn't really make complete sense, although Harlan was smart enough to get a psychiatric evaluation for himself when he changed it after finding out he had cancer. But, mostly, because my uncle is an asshole and can't stand the idea that he didn't get Blood Like Wine nor the copyrights to Harlan's work, even if he was always shitty at his job and Harlan only kept him there because he wanted a figurehead who would never challenge him."

"Uhm… Yes. And why do you think you can't sleep, Ransom?"

"Oh, _that_."

Dr. Benchimol gave a light chuckle.

"Yes, _that_." She said.

"Because I'm going insane."

"Are you, now?"

"Yes. I still have no memories of those two months, and I'm… I'm having hallucinations."

"How so?"

"You know, seeing things that don't exist."

"You have been seeing things that don't exist?" She changed her position in the armchair. "For how long?"

"Not seeing. Just… just when I'm falling asleep or waking up that I see her."

Another long beat of silence passed. Ransom hated the silence, so he had to speak, even though he also hated to speak.

"I mostly hear her. There's this woman. Her voice is in my head since I woke up in the clinic. And sometimes I think she is in my house. I hear her footsteps, or she speaks to me from another room. And, obviously, there's no one there."

"Why obviously?"

"I live alone." He grabbed one of the fluffy decorative pillows on the couch and started playing with its fur. "I have always lived alone."

"Always?"

"I mean, yeah. When I was a kid, I lived with my parents, but they weren't there most of the time. My father was always in the club playing golf or traveling with my mother, and she was always working. Then, in college, I briefly shared a room with a guy in the dorm, but he dropped out, and my parents thought it would be better if I lived off-campus in a rented place of my own, to keep me away from bad influences. More likely to keep me from exercising my bad influence over someone else, actually. After that, I got my house as a graduation gift. So, yeah, I have always lived alone."

They stayed in silence again. This time she spoke first:

"And this woman… Why do you think you keep seeing her?"

Ransom shrugged.

"I don't know. I have no idea who she is or even how she looks like."

"You said you saw her when you're between being asleep and awake."

"Kind of. And in my dreams."

Dr. Benchimol was leaning towards him now, with her elbows on her knees and her face resting on her hands. Ransom felt weird with all of that undivided attention, but in a different way than he felt with the Brazilian psychiatrist.

"When I say I haven't been able to sleep in the past month, that's a little bit of a hyperbolic statement. I do sleep. In weird hours, like when the sun is rising and setting. Or in the absolute middle of the night. But I wake up all the time, my heart racing and feeling even more tired than before going to sleep. Sometimes I think there's someone in my room. She's usually with her back turned to me, her dark hair splayed over the pillow. Then I blink, and she's gone."

"Do you have any idea why sleeping makes you so anxious?"

Every night he dreams of a green paradise and a woman with hazel eyes and a foggy face. He dreams of her laugh. "If you tell me my name, I'll give you anything you wish for," she tells him again and again. He dreams of her smell of honey and wildflowers. He dreams of her limber body moving against him, of her moaning in his ear. What else could he wish for? He also dreams of a man with dangerous eyes and a dangerous smile, who gets too close from him and whispers something in his ears in a language he doesn't speak. In these bad dreams, he wakes up when the hazel-eyed woman arrives in the odd living room filled with random knick-knacks. Ransom can feel her fear. He wants to comfort her. He can't tell all of that to the doctor.

"Because there's this man in my dreams. This man's voice. He tells me to kill her."

Silence stretches again.

"I don't know if I killed her. I don't know if any of that is even real." He buries his face on his hands, tired. It's been so long since he spoke so much. The doctor in Brazil was more of a chatter. Doctor Benchimol lets him talk almost uninterrupted. He doesn't know if he likes it.

"We need to finish for today, but I would like to see you again next week. For now, I can recommend that you try to reincorporate exercising into your routine, and I can write you a prescription for some phytotherapy pills that will help lower your anxiety during the day. Are you currently taking any medication?"

Ransom takes out of his pocket the prescription for the anxiety pills the Brazilian doctor wrote for him, that he only took once, and hands over the paper to her. Dr. Benchimol reads it, and a frown forms on her forehead.

"Have you been taking this amount of clonazepam, and you still can't sleep?"

"I'm not taking this. This is what the doctor in Rio wanted me to take."

"And may I ask why you didn't follow his prescription?"

"I hated how my mouth got dry, and my head felt even foggier with those pills." Ransom answered, feeling like a child caught stealing Christmas cookies.

Dr. Benchimol wrote something on her cellphone very quickly. 

"Good. Please, don't self-medicate while you're under my care, and, please, don't follow this prescription. If, eventually, you think that valerian and passiflora aren't enough, we can switch up to something else, like melatonin. I only prescribe clonazepam in acute cases and for short periods of time, which doesn't seem to be your case, at first glance."

Ransom agrees with his head and takes the new prescription that she hands him. There's "meditation" written there, along with "aerobic exercises,” and some instructions for a compounding pharmacy to make herbal pills to make him less edgy. She does have an M.D., a diploma in Psychology, and forty years of experience as a psychiatrist. She did publish in _The Lancet_ several times and in the _American Journal of Psychology._ He read some of her papers, she's not insane. Even if this prescription on his hands reminds him of something that Joni could call "treatment.”

"Ransom?" She calls him, and he realizes that he has been staring at the paper for too long. They are standing now. "We have just met, but can you trust me a little here and try to do some of the things I'm recommending you?"

"Yes." He agrees, but there's no heart in his words. He surely won't meditate. But he really needs to go back to the gym, and he can try to take her pill plants.

"Remember: this is _your_ mental healthcare. It can only work if we work together. I am the specialist, but you're the one that is living it. You are in control here, but you're not doing this alone. We are a team now -- if you want to."

"Yes. Ok, I want to."

"Can I hug you? I like to hug my clients at the end of the session. These things tend to take a toll on us, and I think that hugs help, in some cases."

"Is this mandatory?" He asks, taking a step back.

"No, no, absolutely not." She answers, chuckling. "The only thing mandatory here is mutual respect, ok?"

"Ok." He offers her his hand, and she shakes it using both of her hands again, like when they met. Ransom finds himself oddly comforted by her touch.

She guides him to the door and points him the way down the stairs.

"I'll see you Tuesday at ten." She says, as a manner of goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] "Eliana, can you please grab a cup with ice chips and a bucket for my patient, please? Thank you you're a dear."  
> [2] This is a real hospital (unlike the clinic). It's a huge public hospital specialized in emergency care and trauma in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, we have the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS; Single Healthcare Sistem). It's public, free, and universal. Anyone who needs -- Brazilian citizen or not; rich or poor -- can go into one of the SUS facilities at any time and be treated for free. It's not perfect and it has been systematically defunded, especially in the past 5 years. But I still feel super proud that Ransom would have been treated by great doctors and walked out without owning a single penny.  
> [3] Small and very touristy town in the state of Rio de Janeiro, home of the FLIP. It has beautiful beaches and forests. It also has lots of small islands with illegal occupations by rich people, like Ransom's "friend". The indigenous community in the area battles the occupations for over 20 years (and usually loses).  
> [4] Ok, this is a very nerdy joke. After the Trojan War (which lasted 10 years), Odysseus gets lost for another 10 years on the sea until he finally arrives at home. He dresses like a beggar to access how things were working out without him. He finds out that his small kingdom is suffering with lack of resources because everyone thinks that he's dead (or bailed on his family) and there's a bunch of freeloaders there courting (harassing) his wife, Penelope. He gets very angry with all of that and murders them all with the help of his 20yo son and the servants, who also hated the ~intenders. In other words: Ransom is threatening Meg.  
> [5] I, too, have stayed over 3 hours trapped in traffic under a deluge in Rio.  
> [6] Ah, cab drivers. What can I say about my love for them?  
> [7] Marta is singing a common lullaby for children that Heitor Villa-Lobos, a Brazilian classical (genius) composer, wrote in the early 20th Century. It was a folk song before, but most people go with his version. The lyrics translate to: "If this street was mine / I would order them to tile it / With diamond cobblestones / So my love could step on them / In this street there's a small forest / And it's called loneliness / In these woods lives an angel / An angel who stole my heart". "Anjo" in Portuguese usually means the angels of Judaism/Christianity/Islam, but it can be a term employed to talk about any supernatural entity, especially on older texts.  
> [8] Is this me subtly signaling that Ransom's psychiatrist was a member of the Argentinian resistance against their military dictatorship? Yes.
> 
> On a different topping: I'm curious to know if we have Hannibal fans here and if they recognized our own Dr. Lecter in Marta's Father, König. He was my main inspiration to create him. A worthy monster of our fairytale, don't you think?


	11. Stranger, lover, this day will be our last (ah, se tu soubesses como eu sou carinhoso)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What do the fae want in the tales, Ransom?" The beautiful voice echoed inside his head again. "Take me to your room and I'll show you."
> 
> Her face was never more clear behind his eyelids. Infinite freckles on her nose and cheeks. A perfect smile. Sun-kissed brown hair and tanned skin. Big doe eyes, dark with lust in the night. The woman who shone like a star when he kissed her. Marta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may forget but
> 
> Let me tell you  
> this: someone in  
> some future time  
> will think of us  
> (Sappho)

He went back to the clinic every week for months. Dr. Benchimol was right: little by little he was able to sleep again. He still dreamed of the woman, but she wasn't the sole focus of their work. Ransom talked a lot about his family, his failures, how he felt adrift in life. He decided that he had no interest in managing the publishing house and helped Linda hire a new president to take care of the everyday in business. He had no idea why he felt compelled to do it, but, in addition to paying Dr. Benchimol her regular fees, Ransom decided to donate to her social clinic. When he handed her the check with an impressive number of zeros after one session, the normally extremely professional doctor burst in tears. It was the first time that Ransom hugged her. After that, it only felt right to always hug her at the end of each session.

Ransom never needed to go back to clonazepam. The woman still spoke in his mind every once in a while, but this didn't make Ransom so anxious anymore. Not since the day the doctor asked him why he was so afraid to "be crazy". Was the voice telling him anything bad?, she pressed. He was forced to admit that no. She would usually sing, laugh, or talk normally with him.

"Maybe this is part of your memories coming back, maybe this is a coping mechanism, only time will tell us, Ransom."

"People who hear voices are crazy, doc." He retorted.

"This is a word that says nothing to me, Ransom. The important thing is that you're not in suffering and that you can pursue your truth and happiness." She shrugged.

"So I'm not schizophrenic?"

"Aside from the voices, Ransom, which appears as a symptom of many things in the DSM and the ICD, you have literally no other symptoms that would classify you as schizophrenic. But, even if you were, plenty of people live full and happy lives with schizophrenia, the important thing is to take care of yourself and seek good human connections."

***

"Good human connections" was what led him to try to have a friendly relationship with Meg. After all, if anyone could understand the full force of what it was to grow up in the Thrombey clan, it was her. They didn't become best friends, but sometimes they had nice lunches and Ransom could even enjoy himself at the art shows she invited him to. He also sought out his old Yale gang. Pete  Britteridge got really excited with it and took him to parties on his private jet. His old friends who usually tagged along convinced Ransom to do drugs and stay awake dancing all night like they're frat boys again. It was fun in a way, but not like when he was in his early twenties. After the benders, he wakes up in the morning always feeling like shit. The hangovers now take two days to really go away. But Ransom still goes with them, because that's the only kind of friendship he has ever known.

In the middle of a party during the summer in Ibiza, he smelled her and heard her laugh in the middle of the deafening sounds of the music.

Her tiny and slender figure was dancing amongst the crowd, gleefully. Her dark hair was shorter than he remembered.  _ Did he remember? _ She was wearing a tight miniskirt and a tank top that left her tanned shoulders exposed to him.

He grabbed her arm and she turned to him with a beautiful smile…

That wasn't hers. The nose was longer than it should be. Her eyes were blue instead of hazel. And there were no freckles on her cheeks.  _ How did he know she should look like that? _

The disappointment was so strong that Ransom let go of her arm and practically ran away from the club to his hotel room. In the early morning, he booked himself a first class ticket back home and decided to admit that his party days are over.

***

This was the first time he cried on Doctor Benchimol's couch. He had sniffled before, talking about his lonely childhood and his fears of never being able to find out something to make him happy. This time, he cried like a little boy. He didn't even know if this woman was real, he didn't know her name, and his dreams told him that he probably wanted to murder her at some point. But he missed her like a phantom limb that keeps itching and hurting. He missed her every second of every day to the point that he hadn't had sex at least since last September. Doctor Benchimol let him cry until he got tired, listening in compassionate silence.

“So, you've realized that those old friends of yours are interested in doing activities that you're not anymore?” She finally asked him while Ransom blew his nose.

“Yes. But is this really the part you want to focus on from all that I've cried right now?” He asked back, kind of hurt with her nonchalant posture.

"Yes, because I think this connects us with our theme from the past few months which is figuring out what you want to do with your life and what are good connections in your life. You feel lonely, Ransom. How can you change this?"

He ran his hands over his face and shook his head.

"You're right. How are you always right?"

"I am not always right." She shrugged his comment off. "But I'd like to believe that I'm good at my job. And, also, remember you're not the only one to feel that way."

"You have other patients who are haunted by mysterious Latin women?"

This made her raise an eyebrow.

"Your ghost is Latina? This is new information."

"Yes, she is. Maybe she can be someone I met in Rio, I have thought of that several times, but everything else in the dreams is so unbelievable! She shines in the middle of the night, like a star."

"Dreams are often filled with metaphors, Ransom. You can tell me more about them without worrying about being realistic, they rarely are." Doctor Benchimol had a small smile on her face, always reassuring Ransom that he had no need to feel insane with her.

***

He decided it was time to date. Really date, as in a nice restaurant with someone age appropriate, and make small talk with them. He already had regretted the whole idea when Meg sent a text telling him that she had fixed a blind date for him. But he kept thinking about Dr. Benchimol's remarks about him sabotaging all the good things that happened in his life and how he could practice being kinder to other people as a way to finally learn to be kinder to himself, so he didn't cancel it. If nothing, he would have the opportunity to smugly tell his therapist how she was wrong and he was right and he was destined to be alone forever.

Sex? Yes. Sex came easily. The whole human connection part thing was where he was a disaster.

He arrived earlier than his date at the restaurant and was already at his table when she got there. She was a tiny thing. Brunette, with big blue eyes and strong eyebrows, not really a beauty. She was very normal, Ransom decided.

"Hi, I'm Clarissa." She said, with a soft but decided voice, and then smiled when Ransom pulled her chair for her. He changed his mind: she was pretty.

There was some shifting quality on her, underneath her understated clothes that announced her job as a T.A. in the Gender Studies department where Meg did her M.A., something chameleon-like. In some angles, she seemed almost hot. In others, her face was forgettable. Doctor Clarissa Weiss was very funny and brilliant, and the night ended up being way better than Ransom anticipated.

"You're way more interesting than your cousin described you." She said, as she was recovering from laughter after a story Ransom told her from his Summer spent backpacking through Europe. He was using all of his tricks that night, partially out of spite in being able to tell about this night to Doctor Benchimol without being reprimanded, partially because he was, in fact, feeling lonely. 

"Oh yeah? And why exactly did you agree to date an uninteresting man?" He asked, pretending to be hurt. Maybe he wasn't just pretending.

"Look, don't take this the wrong way… But I'm just getting off from a long-term relationship with another academic -- a classic two-body problem -- and I'm still very raw. I just wanted something simple and fun, you know?" She looked actually apologetic while she ate her ice cream.

"A classic two what? I don't want to confirm your assumptions that I would be a himbo or something, but this expression makes me picture you and two more people in a three way and I suppose that that's not what you meant."

This made her laugh again.

"I'm sorry. I don't think you're a himbo. It was just a very nerdy way of referencing physics to explain that my ex-boyfriend was offered a post-doc grant in Vienna and I was accepted for this T.A. job here in Boston, so… Since neither of us wanted to be the one to sacrifice our careers for our relationship of five years, we tried the long-distance thing for a while and… Well, and he broke up with me last time I visited him. On Christmas Eve." She stopped to drink the final sip in her wine glass while Ransom paid their bill. "What about you?"

"I haven't been really a 'relationship' guy so far." He said, getting up from his chair and waiting for Clarissa to do the same. "I think I only seriously dated one person, Jenny, when I was a freshman in college."

"What? Just one relationship ten years ago?" She asked, looping her arm around his bicep while they walked out of the restaurant. "So are you telling this to prepare me for the fact that you won't call me again or to see if I like playing huntress?"

Ransom laughed. They were walking to her car.

"I thought that you were still very raw and not looking for anything serious, doctor." He looked at her with his best sly smile.

She seemed to consider his words for a moment.

"Being a specialist in Gender Studies doesn't make me immune to the siren call that is for a former nerd to be able to charm a bad boy." They had stopped by her small second-hand car in the parking lot.

She was playing with her keys and looking at him through her long and thick eyelashes. There was a fake coyness in the way she bit her lower lip and played with her hair. Ransom knew this dance by heart. He took one step closer to her and gently tilted her head by her chin, pulling her closer to him. Her lips were soft and tasted like mint chocolate chip ice cream and white wine. She gasped softly when he nibbled lightly on her bottom lip like she was doing seconds earlier. And then, when doctor Clarissa Weiss intertwined her fingers at his nape, Ransom had to stop the kiss. There was some weird feeling of coldness in his chest. Clarissa looked at him, worried.

"Is everything ok?" She asked.

Ransom was looking around, searching for something that he couldn't quite understand what was. They were in November, in Boston, the cold night wind sweeped around them. And, for some inexplicable reason, Ransom was really disappointed at not finding a single butterfly in that parking lot.

He made up some excuse about a headache and promised to call her to schedule a next date. All the time they talked, he was looking for blooming flowers and for the soft movement of wings around them. Nothing. No electrical current of power in his body either, no matter how much he opened and closed his hands by his sides. When she left, he almost ran to his car. Sitting behind the wheel, he started to hyperventilate. His hands were shaking. He rested his forehead on the wheel and closed his eyes for a moment.

_ "What do the fae want in the tales, Ransom?" _ The beautiful voice echoed inside his head again.  _ "Take me to your room and I'll show you." _

Her face was never more clear behind his eyelids. Infinite freckles on her nose and cheeks. A perfect smile. Sun-kissed brown hair and tanned skin. Big doe eyes, dark with lust in the night. The woman who shone like a star when he kissed her.  _ Marta. _

***

After that, the dam containing his memories opened in a torrent. Her voice, her joking voice, her beauty, their sex. Marta also haunted him almost corporeally for a week. He stayed at home, in a feverish state, revisited by every memory and connection he had with the fairy.  _ His _ fairy. She sat on the bed and discussed with him about her suspicions of him cheating on their game of Go during the prior evening. She would play with her dogs in Ransom's backyard and wave for him while he tried to get some water. Ransom's senses knew he was in the States, in the Autumn, but his soul had been left behind deep in the Brazilian forest.

He then went back to the small wooden box hidden inside his closet. When he touched it, his body started to shake and his fever spiked. This time, Ransom was being haunted by a very different god.

A thunder clapped outside the house and the lights went off when König's voice came at Ransom's ear:

_ "The only way to live forever is to own the heart of a star, Ransom. Why settle for a couple more decades as a pet for one of them when you can take it for yourself?" _

***

Although he felt disgusted by the suggestion made by Marta's own father, he found out that he couldn't tell it to her. The words tried to come out a few times while they walked together to the house's basement, with no success. Before he knew it, he had grabbed a knife laying around and hid it in his pants. It was as though his body wasn't his. Even worse: like his body belonged to the worst version of himself. Each step he took, each word he told Marta in that evening, everything was like a scene for her. This horrible greedy monster could only think about robbing her, about killing her. He was sure that she would kill him. He was sure that she would eat him. He was just going to outrun her. He didn't want to touch the amulet she gave him that night. It almost burned his fingers before Ransom threw it in the wooden box, with some stupid excuse about desiring her.

When she told him that she loved him whilst Ransom was pretending to sleep, he almost screamed. He wanted to tell her to run. The knife under his pillow poked his head, reminding him of the betrayal to come.

He stabbed her in the stomach. He wanted to stop when she opened her eyes a millisecond before the blade met its destiny, but he couldn't. That nasty voice in his head told him that, since he already had been caught with a dagger in his hands, why not go all the way?  _ In for a penny…  _

The blade, though, refused to fulfill its purpose and shrunk itself into the hilt. Marta's eyes welled with tears and, before Ransom could throw the dagger away and try to finish the job with his hands, Alice opened the huge glass doors that connected Marta's room with the front porch. There was a spear in her hands and a jaguar by her side.

_ "That's how I die." _ He thought. And then everything went black.

***

He had no idea why Marta and Alice hadn't killed him that night almost a year ago. He understood, now, that they had put some sort of amnesia spell on him, erasing his memories from the three months he had spent with Marta. Ransom would think that he was having another psychotic break and taking too seriously some daydream he was having, but inside the wooden box there was a crystal amulet shaped like a frog in a golden chain and a compass that pointed South. He also could feel the magic thrumming in his veins again. It was a weird feeling, because he had absolutely no comprehension and no control over it, but he felt it. He knew he had a piece of Marta within himself and a bond with her that hadn't been severed by her father's plot.

Ransom also knew that, for Marta to forgive him for his weakness and betrayal, he would have to cash the only possible chip he had available: finding out her name and making  _ this _ his request. He spent two weeks navigating online pages and subreddits about occultism and fairies. Not everything was trash, although a good chunk of it was. In one of the many weird pages he encountered, he discovered that a spellcaster must always sign their word. Marta's real name should be written somewhere in the amulet she made for him. Unfortunately, the engravings in the stone weren't in a language that Ransom could understand.

He closed his notebook, frustrated and tired, and leaned back on his chair, trying to breathe and not allow his anxiety to consume him. He hadn't gone to therapy for a couple of weeks. He couldn't go. No matter what Doctor Benchimol told him about her convictions of opposing forced commitment to psychiatric institutions, Ransom couldn't speak with her about any of that. He got up and decided to make some tea. The days were getting shorter and shorter with November coming to an end. Ransom watched the woods around him grow darker as the night fell while he drank his mug of tea. His phone buzzed inside his pocket, alerting him to a new email.

It was an advertisement for _ "Aion Bookshop and Cafe" _ , some tiny place downtown that he had never heard of, but apparently specialized in books on the subject of paranormal studies and the occult. Those algorithms were getting more and more eerily precise, Ransom thought to himself.

Ransom went to the bookshop the next morning right after breakfast. He missed seeing people and maybe there he would find something more helpful than what he could glean from the nerds online. The shop was so tiny that Ransom almost couldn't find it.

It was basically a small window where strange books written in different languages were exhibited side by side with crystals, dream catchers, and a wide variety of New Age looking objects. Ransom opened the door and a small bell chimed in his announcement. A beautiful, dark-skinned black woman, with brown doe-eyes, and short curly hair smiled at him from behind the counter. A myriad of golden tattoos adorned her skin.

"Ah, it was past the time you came already." There was something weird in the way she chose to greet him. A flash of a pink scarf and being rendered powerless came to his mind.

"...Elliott?" Ransom asked, walking towards her. Her smile grew bigger.

"I see you are wearing the amulet my baby star made for you." She gently tucked one of her curls behind her ear. Marta had told him, a while ago, that the gods got tired of their bodies and genders from time to time and would change it just for the kicks.

"Maybe he's not as dumb as we thought he was, after all." A familiar voice, with a strong cowboy accent, came from behind Ransom. Elegantly dressed for the coming winter, Benoit was sitting at one of the tables inside the Cafe. In front of him, a hot cup of tea emanated an enchanted flow of smoke that formed shapes like a passing cloud. A rabbit, a flower, a lion, and a butterfly made of smoke danced before Ransom's eyes before disappearing into thin air.

" _ Lover _ ," Elliott chastised Benoit, although her voice sounded more endeared than serious, "remember he's here for her."

"If you don't mind me asking, how the fuck do you know that?" Ransom turned to her, crossing his arms on his chest.

Elliott laughed, not answering him.

"She's the master of all illusions, human." Benoit answered instead, drinking his tea and looking at Ransom with a raised eyebrow.

"I thought you were Time, as in The Time."

"Yes, that's correct." Elliott leaned on the counter, resting her chin on her intertwined fingers. "And Chronos is nothing but an illusion, dear. Everything has already happened and is happening now."

"So there's no real free will?" There was a queasy feeling in Ransom's gut. He was never a fan of Philosophy classes, precisely due to these questions; questions that he didn't really know if he wanted the answer for.

"That's not what I said.  _ Everything _ that can happen will happen, Ransom, dancing forever in the fabric of reality." That's when he realized that Elliott's eyes weren't simply dark brown as they seemed, but, instead, in her irises, whole galaxies danced, barely contained in that human shape. "That's how I know you remembered her. But I can't know what you're coming to ask of me this time."

This time. Ransom lost Marta in infinite ways, across the stitches Elliott weaved with their lives when creating reality. He would also fight for her in infinite ways. In a weird sense, this was a comforting thought.

"I need to learn her name. Her real name."

"Ah." Elliott's smile seemed like a cat's who got the cream. "But you already do."

"She was born in the Summer Solstice in the South. Her happiness makes the world bloom. She shines bright in the dusk and brighter in the dawn." Ransom said those facts out loud as if those things could make things make sense in his head and juggle some memory. Elliott kept looking at him, politely interested. Behind him, Benoit was silent. "Her sister, whom she loves, is her opposite in many ways. Alice is a war goddess and I think that was why she chose to call herself Marta for the humans, because this makes her closer to Alice. She's a star."

"Yes." Benoit answered.

"A literal star?" Ransom asked, confused.

"There's no such thing with the gods, my dear." Elliott chimed in. "Everything with us is literal poetry."

"She's a goddess?"

"Yes." There was tenderness in Elliott's eyes. "But she doesn't know it yet."

"Have I heard about her before?"

"Maybe you've heard of old existences of her. But, no, this one you've met has about 211 human years, just like you know. If she's not killed, she will live as long as she wants to." Hearing Benoit's words, Ransom pulled a chair to sit. He looked through the shop's window and realized that the snowflakes were frozen in their place mid air, as well as the people walking on the street.

There it was again, that dawning sense of his own irrelevance and mortality in standing among gods. Would he be like one of the humans in the ancient Greek tales? A temporary lover Marta would eventually get bored with? Or things would go as she had told him a year ago: he would have the rest of his life with her, who would never age, and she would see him die? He couldn't delve too much into this. He needed to go back to Marta. Whatever extra time he could get with her was enough, if he could make her forgive him.

Ransom cleaned his throat before speaking again, trying to gain some time to gather his thoughts. Elliott and Benoit waited for him in a peaceful silence only interrupted by Benoit's teacup clinking with its saucer when put down after a sip.

"So, yes. Her name. I need it. It's not simply 'star', right? Otherwise you wouldn't say it in front of me."

"There are infinite stars in the universe, Ransom, it would be highly non-specific to name her just 'star', although humans do it all the time." Benoit's golden spoon clinked three times when he stirred the tea in it. "And some stars aren't stars at all."

"What do you mean?" Ransom frowned his forehead.

Elliott waved her long fingered hands and, for a moment, they were floating in space, although Ransom could still smell and hear everything inside the cafe. They were gigantic, seeing planets, comets, stars, black holes, and whole galaxies revolving on themselves before their eyes. Ransom could feel his sanity fraying at the edges when he dared to try to look directly at Elliott and Benoit. Here, their divine nature couldn't be hidden away. It was dangerous, maddening, and beautiful at the same time.

"All there is… Is and isn't in itself. You're just a human, and you're also not." Benoit's voice switched in a million different accents and depths at the shell of Ransom's ear. And, yet, he was still sitting by the tiny table, drinking from his delicate porcelain cup. "It's like Bill once said:  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

A small shudder passed through Ransom. Bill. Bill as in the Fae that once courted Marta and gave her the Frankenstein copy? As in William Shakespeare? But, then again, Elliott expanded herself around him, her curls filled with passing comets and the golden tattoos on her skin revealing their other nature: they were tattoos and, also, they were threads of life itself.

"What is a star and isn't at the same time?" Ransom muttered more to him than to the gods he was talking to.

They were in the center of the Milky Way now, coming closer and closer to his galaxy. The stars flew by Ransom in a succession of irrelevant existences way bigger than him. In his fevered state, a barefoot child passed in front of his eyes, running and laughing, skipping through planets as if they were cobblestones. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes green as a toxic atmosphere. Her skin shone like diamonds as she grew. Marta. The diametral opposite to War.

_ Venus. _

"Morning star," Ransom called. As if she could hear him, Marta stopped on her tracks, turning. She smiled, warm and sweet like a summer breeze. "Morning star!"

She laughed and shone so bright Ransom had to close his eyes. He woke up on his bed, knowing it was time to leave again.

He didn't need much where he was going, since he had no idea if he was ever coming to that home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter's title is from the song ["Stranger/Lover"](https://open.spotify.com/track/6CCcd2AtzUmGn1pVqb2IGM) by Ibeyi and the second part comes from ["Carinhoso"](https://open.spotify.com/track/5zfWoufXTAXICVcxgR5fYO) (Tender) by Pixinguinha and it can be translated to "Ah, if only you knew how tender I am"
> 
> Next chapter will be the last, I intend to publish it before the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere (Dec 21). There are no notes here, but a few Easter Eggs:  
> Dr. Clarissa Weiss's appearance was based on Alison Brie. "Aion", the name of Benoit and Elliot's bookshop, was the "Time of/for the Gods" in Ancient Greece, so this was very much intentional.
> 
> Also, I want to thank Andrina_Nightshade for beta-ing this and the final chapter <3


	12. E cada estrela é uma flor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the finale of our fairytale, Ransom needs to find a way to be with Marta again.

Ransom stopped his rented car by the huge boulder by the road. This time, the trees didn't budge for him. There was no trail and he had no idea if he would succeed or even be able to walk out of the forest alive. While in Massachusetts everything was already covered in snow, on that road in the middle of nowhere in the state of Rio de Janeiro, it was an almost unbearably hot Spring day. The forest towered over him, eerily quiet in its deep shades of green. Once upon a time, the trees gossiped when he walked amongst them. It was not like it had been during the past year, when the magic stored in his veins was dormant and he had forgotten. Ransom could almost feel the fear exhaled by every plant on his path. No animals could be seen. The only sounds with him came from his own steps.

He couldn't remember the path Marta guided him through, so he wandered for hours. The only thing he remembered for certain was the boulder. He felt dumb for having brought just a single bottle of water, which ran out while the sun was still high in the sky. Not that, in the deep part of the woods where he was probably going to die, the sun is that hot when a beam of light manages to seep between tree branches. He knew that he was probably walking in circles. He called for Marta, but no one answered. He didn't want to use her secret name without seeing her, he didn't know what would happen when he said it. He also didn't know if he was sure of which language he should use. Marta told him that her parents raised her speaking an old German dialect and Guarani. He researched both on the way, just in case "Morning Star" doesn't cut the deal.

When the night fell, according to his watch, at 9 p.m. on December 20th of 2014, Ransom's skin had been devoured by mosquitoes and he was pretty sure that his clothes were filled with ticks. He was going to die in the forest, without ever seeing her again. He fell to his knees; his refusal to cry was not a sign of strength, but merely a byproduct of his dehydration.

Something moved in the bushes in front of him. The first animals that he saw besides the insects were three jaguars, who looked at him ferociously. He got to his feet, stumbling, and the beasts charged after him. He ran. He fell rolling down a hill, hitting trees and stones on his way. When he finally stopped, he realised his clothes were in shambles and his Rolex had been completely smashed. His ankle hurt like hell, he was sure it was at least sprained. It's his end. He was going to be eaten now.

The jaguars approached him, sniffing. They almost seemed to be waiting for him to get up. He did, limping, and the animals kept accosting him, circling him, forcing him to move. He walked all night, the silent predators always behind him, in an unrelenting stalk. Sometimes, one of them would run in front of him, forcing Ransom to change his path. The forest should have been completely dark, but the moon was shining above the treetops and he could somewhat see his way.

The temperature dropped and Ransom could feel the ground getting wetter and softer. He limped a little more and found an opening in the woods. Before his eyes, a river ran fast without making a single sound in passing by the stones. Ransom could still hear his own steps and the movements the jaguars made around him, so it wasn't as if he suddenly lost his hearing. For some reason unknown to him, the whole forest seemed to refuse to make a single sound. Ransom looked back and his guards were still on his watch, with those three pairs of eyes that shone in the dark like embers. He walked towards the river and the water seemed to speed up its flow, trying to stop him from going in.

"Do we know each other already?" He asked. Yes, he asked a question to a river. He was completely out of his mind and, to an outsider, he would probably look insane. But there was no one else there. And there was a very familiar stone rising in the middle of the water.

A watery figure emerged from the surface, emanating a soft glow. Her wobbly face took a few moments choosing how to present herself, changing features between several women that had passed through Ransom's life. The river spirit decided to stay with Meg's, for Ransom's surprise.

"Yes. Yes, we do." Her voice was bubbly and high pitched, barely containing a small laugh. "You came here with _her_ , many moons ago. You told me I was the prettiest river you've ever seen."

"Oh," Ransom realized, "you're the river where we..."

"Yes!" She giggled. "... Are you here for her?"

"Yes. Can you help me?"

She took a watery finger to her lips and the river flow slowed down, allowing Ransom to step in. He submerged completely in her waters, drinking big gulps without shame, feeling the cool liquid awaken and comfort him. The river enveloped Ransom's legs and changed its course, flowing up, and helping him walk. By the margins, the trio of jaguars kept following Ransom. He realized that they were actually a family: the group consisted of two adult jaguars and a cub. His ankle, little by little, was healing with the tender touch of the magic water. Her head formed on the surface again, and her glowy eyes looked at him, curious:

"Aren't you afraid?"

"Afraid?" Ransom asked, focused on trying to not trip on the slippery stones on the riverbed.

"Of the King." Her voice was just a murmur.

Ransom furrowed his brow, trying to think of a king.

"König?" He thought that this was his name, not a title. But, then again, Marta had warned him that fae and gods don't give out their real names to the humans. The river shushed Ransom when he spoke the word, the water was colder around him. _She_ was afraid, that was clear. "Is he here?"

"Yes. He never left."

When she pointed out to the sky, Ransom saw that heavy clouds were gathering above them, hiding the moon and the stars. Further on their path, flashes of lightning could be seen devouring the mountain where Marta once had taken Ransom to see her birthplace.

"A year ago, there was a horrible fight between the King and his daughters. Many trees fell during the battle," the river kept going with her story. Her watery figure circled Ransom as if she was a shark just waiting to pounce. It was so weird to see Meg's face on hers. "Their house doesn't exist anymore, or so I heard. Two mountains vanished with the King's ire. The young one ran away, the star helped her with that."

"What happened to her?" He asked, feeling his heart on his throat.

"She's safe. Her kid was born in good health."

"I don't give a fuck about Alice. What happened to Marta?"

"She's not a warrior, you know." There was a beat of silence between them. "She's… soft."

"But you're speaking of her in the present tense. She's alive."

"Something like that." Her answer pierced through Ransom's gut. "She couldn't take it all. The fighting. The betrayal. So she just… Shut down."

"What do you mean?"

"The King took her to the sacred mountain, to the lake with still waters, to heal her. He has a temper, but he's still her father. But she's not healing. There are some wounds not even magic can fix. That's why the forest is so quiet, the King proclaimed that we are in mourning."

Ransom could feel the dread spreading through his veins. Marta wasn't alive or dead. And König was guarding over her.

"But..." The river kept talking. She was in front of him now, her bluish eyes shimmered reflecting the moonlight. "Perhaps _you_ could do something."

"Something?"

"It's your fault, you know. All that happened. Your betrayal made her unreasonable, made her fight with her father. She wouldn't listen to reason. She should know better."

"Know better how?"

"There's no winning with him, human. Resisting is futile, the best way is to just surrender to his will."

That's when it hit him. Why Meg's face. What she was talking about.

"Yes, yes, you're correct. I'll do my best to apologize and fix my mistake." _Never cross a river_ , Marta warned him, ages ago, _they will drown you in the blink of an eye_. No matter how harmless and friendly they may seem.

The river smiled, predatorial. Could Elliott and Benoit also be a part of König's game too? If so, what was the game? How could Ransom beat them? How was it that Marta would always win when she played?

"She's in the cave behind the waterfall, right?"

"Yes." The river agreed, still staring at Ransom.

"So I should probably go by land now, since you and the other river don't cross paths, right? I mean, I would rather spend all my time with you, but I need to get to His Majesty as soon as possible, so I can undo my mistakes."

There was a beat of silence in which the river seemed to consider Ransom's words.

"I really shouldn't let you go to the margin," she said.

"Did he tell you to take care of me?" He asked. "You did an amazing job, I'll be sure to let him know that. My injuries are practically healed by now." Ransom tried to give her his best smile. "It's just a matter of practicality. I know you could open a new path in the forest to connect with the other river, but why should we make you work so hard when I'm going there anyway? I promise you he won't be upset."

"... Will you tell him about me?" She asked, suspiciously.

"Sure. You're my favorite river, remember?"

Those words worked out and the river parted her waters for Ransom to leave. Her bubbly voice still came from behind him one last time, anxious:

"Remember to tell him how good I did!"

The jaguars came to him again, but this time Ransom didn't run. The cub was the one who got closer first, lapping at Ransom's wet legs. The big one intently watched the scene as if making sure Ransom wasn't a threat to the baby.

"Hey Alice, long time no see." Ransom decided to greet her. Who else could it be?

In front of his eyes, Alice changed from jaguar to human. With a wave of her hands, small twinkling lights started floating around them, casting a light over the man and the goddess. Ransom could see, then, that her spots transformed into graphisms on her skin, painted in black and red ink in a myriad of patterns. She was naked, having just her arrow crossed on her chest and holding an axe in her hands.

" _Human,_ " she answered, scowling, "we shouldn't be seen talking, therefore, we need to be fast. I thought you would be dead now."

"That's encouraging." Ransom let out a small laugh, shaking his head.

"You're no warrior. A venomous snake, but not a warrior. But I think that you could be what my sister needs to wake up."

"Let's hope you're right."

"You will probably die, are you ready for this?"

Ransom stayed silent for a few moments, studying the face of the woman in front of him. Maybe in another world, another reality, he and Marta had met in different conditions. Maybe she was just a normal girl who cared for people and liked playing Go. Would Ransom even notice her, then?

"I never thought I was meant to last that long on Earth, Alice."

She frowned her face, looking puzzled at Ransom.

"I have a gift for you," she said, at last, taking a feather out of her braided hair and handing it to Ransom.

"...thanks?" He wasn't interested in dying before getting to Marta, but, if he got out of that, he would have some words with his fairy about her sister's lousy gifting skills.

"Put it on your wrist watch," she instructed. Ransom did as he was told, and the watch started ticking again, its glass magically repaired as the feather disappeared in thin air. "This charm will muffle your sounds and make it impossible for König to see you with the corner of his eyes. If he looks straight at you, you will be seen, because his tricking magic is stronger than mine. If you were a warrior, I could give you weapons that cut everything, but you will end up fucking it up like you did with your lousy assassination attempt of my sister or stabbing yourself, so this is the best I can do for you. We will leave you now, this final path you need to go on your own."

She didn't wait for him to say anything else before turning into a jaguar again and disappearing in the trees with her partner and cub. The weak lights remained like small stars around Ransom's head, but they didn't lead the way, just accompanied him on his every step. Ransom had no idea where he was going and the trees didn't help him either. How could he find Marta?

As an answer to his questions, Marta's ghost showed up again behind Ransom's closed eyelids. He heard himself complain to her about her gifts in her stuffy basement:

_"The compass is still not pointing North."_

_"I trust you will figure this out on your own," her gentle voice came to him and Ransom could almost feel the kiss she gave at the corner of his mouth._

He reached out inside his pocket and there he found the watch with the gold chain. Ransom opened it and the needle wasn't spinning anymore. Instead, it pointed South. He followed it and the temperature seemed to drop with each step he took. The air was charged with magic and electricity, and Ransom could feel the taste of rain in his mouth. The sky was clouded, the moon was gone. The only light with him came from Alice's spell.

And then, soon enough, a giant waterfall was in front of him. He should have heard it but the water was frozen in place. Animals of all kinds surround the river as if hibernating, still under König's orders of public mourning. The ground was hard with the frost that covered everything in the middle of December, in the early hours of the Summer Solstice.

The river's spirit rose from the surface, their unshaped watery face reflecting the lights that surrounded Ransom. They exchanged no words, but their waters were warmer than the air, almost protecting Ransom from the out of place winter that surrounded them. Ransom could feel the generations of animals, fairies, and goddesses that came to this river to give birth. They had a calm, reassuring presence while they accompanied him during the final steps of his way.

The waterfall opened like a curtain for Ransom to cross it and the river gave him a gentle goodbye push. Inside the cave that Marta showed him almost a year ago, there was no light, as if the crystals were asleep too. Alice's spell didn't cross the waterfall with him, but the compass in Ransom's hand cast a soft light forward, pointing him the way towards her.

The lake in the middle of the cave turned into a fast stream that streaked through a narrow opening in the stone, leading Ransom further and further under the ground. The air there was stale, and it smelled more and more like gunpowder, sulfur, decomposition, and mold. He tried to walk as silently as possible. His broad shoulders scraped the stone around him. Ransom tried to focus only on the compass and his steps, and not think about how he was possibly walking to his death. He was never meant to last on Earth, after all.

After what could be hours or a few minutes, the stone opened again and there was a new source of light there, almost blinding Ransom after being so long in the dark. Ransom tucked his compass back in his pocket when he realized that all of the treasures that were once stored underneath Marta's cottage were now in that secluded cave in the heart of the mountain.

The fast stream turned into another lake and the source of light illuminating the room came from it, being mirrored in every reflective surface covering the stone ground.

But the thing that made Ransom almost fall to the ground was a huge monster that slept curled around the lake. It had silver iridescent scales that reflected the light from the lake, creating a thousand tiny rainbows in the room. A dragon, like the ones in the old tales, slept just a few yards from Ransom. It wasn't enough that he would have to find Marta and deceive a god, he would have to pass by a fucking dragon.

He walked forward as silently as he could and, to balance himself against the strong stream around his ankles, Ransom placed a hand on the stone wall, cutting himself with the sharpness of it. He hissed through his teeth and took his finger to his mouth, sucking the small cut that bled.

"Wer ist da?" A thunderous voice rumbled. The dragon raised his head, looking around and looking for the intruder.

Ransom ran and hid behind a pile of gold and jewels.

"Who is there?" The voice changed to English. "I smell human."

Ransom recognized König's voice. He needed to find the god before the god found him, and trust that Alice's spell would protect him if His Majesty didn't look straight at him.

With his eyes getting used to the light in the room, Ransom saw that several animal and human carcasses were thrown on the ground, half burnt, half eaten.

If he understood a single thing about König, was his flair for the dramatic and his obsession with telling a good story. He was like a twisted version of Harlan. That being said, Marta should be displayed like a treasure somewhere. She should be in a prominent place in the cave.

The dragon's heavy steps approached the golden pile and he ran again, hiding behind broken statues from a myriad of places in the world, arranged like a museum exhibit. König probably thought of himself as a collector.

He could hear the dragon charging against the pile of gold where Ransom had previously hid behind. Coins and trinkets flew in all directions with the monster's rage.

"Where are you, thief?! You can hide, but you can't run from the King of Storms!" With that boisterous threat, a lightning burst inside the cave, setting on fire a pile of rare manuscripts. "I can smell you, human, and I'll find you! And, when I find you, I'll tear you apart, limb by limb and chew your flesh and gnaw on your bones. I'll swallow your pieces and shit you out like the nothing that you are!"

Feeling that the monster was coming closer again, Ransom ran and threw himself on the ground, skating on the slime that coated the stone, and hid under a huge dining table set for two. Through the lace towel, he could see the beast rummaging through the treasures and sniffing in the air. The fire was spreading through other objects, and cast an ominous light over them. The dragon looked as if it was made of fire itself. Ransom then realized that he wasn't going to find König, because the dragon was the King of Storms in one of his many shapes.

Another lightning bolt struck in the cave, catching on a beautiful painting of nymphs running from a satyr. The fire was faster now, coming closer to the chairs set around the table where Ransom hid underneath. If the dragon didn't catch him first, Ransom was literally going to be toasted.

He looked at the lake and decided that it was his only chance, even if it meant being trapped. It was as Alice said, he was no warrior. He had no fighting chance against an immortal being shaped like a dragon. His only goal was to find Marta. And, then, figure it out from there.

Hoping that the smoke and the sounds of the fire would help hide him even further, he ran towards the water without looking back. When he got to the margin, he saw it: A giant water lily in the middle of the lake.

On top of it, Marta seemed to be asleep. Her long brown hair spread over the leaf and her face looked peaceful. Almost as if she had decided to surrender herself to oblivion. The waters from the lake glowed around her, but Marta herself was completely dimmed out. Without a second thought, he dove in. The rational part of his brain insisted that water lilies aren't supposed to have strong leaves, but it is as she had once explained to him: there's no logic behind magic.

He swam towards her, trying not to cause too much of a splash, and climbed the leaf. He crawled on all fours until he got to her and then he took her face on his hands, noticing that she was even more beautiful than he remembered. There was no wound in the place that he carved the knife. He ran his hands over her abdomen, trying to find a scar, but there was none. Even with being handled and the smoke and the roars from the dragon, Marta kept sleeping soundly.

Hoping that the stories were true, he kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm against his and she still smelled vaguely of honey and wildflowers. When Ransom pulled himself away from her, he saw that her eyes were still closed and her breathing hadn't changed.

Maybe that obsession that ruled his life since the Day of the Dead in 2012 wasn't true love, after all. Maybe it was just that he was what Harlan stole from her. He kissed her again, angry at himself. Angry at her. How could she not come back to him in that moment? How could it all be for nothing?

An ominous laugh rumbled in the cave. Ransom raised his head and saw that König changed back to his human form. A huge scar crossed his face and one of his eyes was milky white now. A flash of a battle -- of jaguar's claws and one of Alice's arrows -- went through Ransom's head, and then he's back in the moment again.

"So, you're not Prince Charming, after all," König teased him.

Ransom held Marta against his chest. He was never meant to last, but he wanted to go in her arms. And he surely wanted that narcissistic monster to pay for all that he did.

"I'm not a prince, that's for certain, but I'm slightly surprised at not being considered charming, Your Majesty," Ransom answered with a joking tone, as if they were dining again.

König turned his back to Ransom and walked towards something out of his eyesight. He decided it was time to try to call Marta.

"Marta. Morning Star. Morning Star, forgive me, please," he whispered against her hair.

König laughed again.

"I, for once, am offended that you think I would ever name a daughter in your ugly language, yankee."

"My fairy. Morgenstern, forgive me." Nothing happened. "You promised you would give me anything if I knew your name. All I want is you, my fairy."

The fire roared around them and, over that, Ransom heard the sound of metal. When he looked again, König had found a huge sword and it appeared to be made of iron. It burned his hand, but he didn't seem to care, walking towards Ransom with a maniac smile on his face.

"Maaaartaaaaaa… If you don't wake up, I'll eat your pet for dinner…" He singsonged, laughing. "Come on, Meine Tochter. Come out and play!"

"Morning Star, Morgenstern, I love you. Come back to me, I need you." With those words, the amulet tucked under Ransom's shirt started to shine and became really warm. When Ransom fished it out, he saw: Marta signed her name in a drawing similar to the ones Alice had on her skin. It wasn't König that named her, not at all. It was her mother.

"Kaaru Mbija, forgive me, come back to me", he begged, cradling her against his chest.

Another lightning bolt sparked from the ceiling of the cave and hit them. The explosion was huge, engulfing everything in light and energy.

***

When Marta opened her eyes, the first thing she noticed was the strong chest that smelled of spices holding her. The second was that the air was charged with electricity and magic and everything smelled of death and decay. Not gentle Death, but the god's uglier side, the one her father loved so much: it smelled of war. Marta clutched her hands on the back of Ransom's shirt. He was damp and shivering against her. He was there.

"You came back," she whispered. "You came back to me."

"I don't deserve you, fairy," he laughed, holding her chin and tilting her face to him. "But I will definitely not leave you again."

Marta laughed and kissed him. She felt as if she was about to burst with happiness. Ransom would never leave her again. He enveloped her waist in her arms and kissed her back. Marta could see through her eyelids that she was glowing again.

They were interrupted by laughter. She broke her kiss, and saw Father surrounded by fire and carrying a sword in his hands.

"I don't know how you both survived my lighting, but you will definitely not survive my blade, Meine Tochter," Father said, as he licked his lips. "You've had a good run, and now that your heart is all mended and shining again, I'll consume you today and become invincible."

"No," Marta said, firm and soft. "You will not, Father. I will leave this cave today and you will never bother us again."

For the first time in her life, she wasn't afraid of him and saw König for what he really was. A pathetic monster that could only thrive with sorrow and destruction. And he would not win this time.

König laughed even harder.

“And what are you planning to do?! You’re not a warrior, you can’t fight! I’ve always warned you, you’re just _soft_!”

Ransom held her tighter against his chest, as if his human frail body could stop König’s fury.

“I’m here,” he whispered, and Marta felt her heart flutter inside her. “This is _our_ end. If you’re gone, I’m gone too.”

“Say your goodbyes now!” König roared and Marta could see her father charging towards them, the iron sword pointed in their direction.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered at Ransom.

“What? I’m not afr…”

“I cannot fight, but I can do what stars do best.” With that, she pressed a hand over Ransom’s eyes. Her whole body tingled. It was suddenly all very clear. "I can shine.”

For the first time in her life, Marta felt at peace. She wasn't hiding parts of herself anymore, no more constraining to appear smaller than she was. Ransom was her only anchor, holding her tight in his warm embrace, and Marta wasn't afraid anymore. She could feel her mother and her grandmother there with her. Death and Time surrounded her, bowed to her. 

Her light occupied every nook and cranny of the room, her heart expanding a thousand times inside her chest. Its color was rose-gold, like the dawn and the dusk. The smell of honey and wildflowers made the stench of war and pillage disappear. Marta could feel the rivers trapped underneath concrete. She could feel the mangled trees and the barren lands. And she felt every sprout and every songbird. She was _everything_. She was free.

  
  


***

  
  


When Ransom opened his eyes again, they were standing on the hill where Marta's cottage used to be, right under her mother's tree and over Harlan's ashes. She was smiling at him, her glow toned down to a gentle intensity. The sun was shining in the sky and the forest was alive again, filled with the sounds of animals, rivers, and plants. There was something different in the air, as if the Earth rejoiced in König's death. When Ransom raised one of his hands to tuck a strand of Marta's hair behind her ear, he saw that his hand was shining too. Less than her, but shining, nonetheless.

"What now, fairy?" He asked in a joking tone.

Marta laughed and flowers burst on the ground around them with the sound.

"Now the world is our oyster, Ransom."

"I don't think that we will be able to hide you from the humans as you are now, Marta," he warned her, softly.

"I don't want to hide anymore. It's time for magic to walk free in this world again."

She kissed him, and Ransom would never cease to be amazed that such a thing could be possible, as to be loved by a goddess.

"Take me away, Ransom. I want to see the ocean."  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the end of our journey. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
> I want to thank my two amazing betas: Caffeinated Jedi and Andrina_Nightshade for their work and investment in this story and these characters.  
> The title of this chapter is from ["É de Manhã"](https://open.spotify.com/track/56Zp9cEujvZ5hzt7UmCstS) (It's morning) by Caetano Veloso and it translates to "And every star is a flower". Nothing could fit more the portrait of my South American Venus. Thank you, thank you all.


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